Good evening.

Good evening and welcome.

Let's see.

This is the January 6th, the first meeting of 2026.

I'm sure we'll say it wrong a couple times tonight.

And we are going to start tonight with an invocation by Councilmember Jackson, and then that will be followed by the Pledge of Allegiance.

So please stand if you will.

Hi everyone.

So we're in the new year, so I thought I'd do a funny kind of light, light hearted invocation with a quote from Dave Beard.

Many years ago, I resolved never to bother with New Year's resolutions, and I've stuck with it ever since.

Councilmember Jackson.

Here.

Councilmember Early, present.

Vice Mayor Thanos?

Here.

Councilmember Shaw, present.

Mayor Love?

Here.

City Attorney Salzman.

Here.

City Manager O'Reilly.

Here.

City Clerk Carico is present.

All righty.

And I don't see Mayor Bell in the room, so you want me to proceed?

All right.

So today it's my pleasure to announce the winners from the decoration uh holiday decor decoration contest.

I understand that the judges are the team council, but they're not here, and Meravelle wasn't able to make it either.

So we have two categories that we do each year.

One is called the general theme, and one is called the commercial theme.

So I will start with our commercial winner, which is Mr.

Gary King.

If you saw it, he's had a beautiful display on 49th.

But I said, wow, that's really pretty.

So if you'll come up, I'll give you your little plaque.

It's a contest between 20,000 Christmas lights and 770 happiness lines.

All right.

Thank you so much for um making our city beautiful.

It was my honor, believe me.

My pleasure.

I actually left some of them up too on the power polls.

They're staying up all year.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

And when you talked about 700,000 lights, uh I think my friends who won the second category, which is Eddie Smith and Patrick Mortimer, um, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say they probably had somewhere between 700,000 and a million lights.

Um not uh not an exaggeration, the front yard, the backyard, way up high in the trees.

He's got the flying pigs, the whole thing.

So um, and Eddie's the one that does most of it, so I'm disappointed they're not here because I wanted to uh have my picture taken with them acknowledging and also to acknowledge at the same time that they do all this.

They're one of the biggest collection sites for Operation Santa.

So they throw a huge party every year, and everybody is encouraged to bring toys with them.

And I've seen truckloads and trucklets and truckloads of toys leave there the day after.

So I'm disappointed they're not here.

If you're watching, thank you guys.

And then our next presentation tonight is going to be from our senior senior advisory committee, and that is going to be done by Miss Karen Schwartz and Mr.

Bradley Brunner.

Please come on up.

Good evening, everybody, Mayor and Council members.

So I don't know if you remember that I was supposed to be here last year.

And unfortunately, I was having a senior moment.

It was more like a senior day.

But anyway, it absolutely um just slipped out of my mind, and I'm very glad to be here tonight.

And I was also hoping to see Maribel, you know, and hoping I would get to follow her.

But we at the um senior advisory council.

There are nine members.

We have two open spots.

I'm not gonna name everybody who's on the committee, but um some of them are here tonight, including me.

We meet on the second Tuesday of each month from September through June at eight o'clock in the morning, much too early, but anyway, that's what we do.

And um since the adoption of resolution 9212 in February 1992, this committee has been tasked with a number of things to determine the long and short-term needs of Gulfport's aging residents and recommend priorities to city council.

Prepare recommendations on program priorities to meet the needs of these same folks, and to serve as an advocate for seniors in matters of local or regional resource distribution.

Um so I want to bring up Brad, who's gonna talk about the walking trails.

And um I believe you had uh uh props.

Props.

Okay.

TV, all that stuff.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you, Kieran.

Thanks, Karen.

Good evening, everybody.

Um really happy to be here and happy to report that we have had a lot of success this year so far, uh, and the previous year uh with the the new Discover Gulf Port Walking Trail system.

So what I thought I'd do is really quickly run through what got us up to the launch of the trail, then I'll talk about the launch, what we've been doing since the launch uh since November 15th, we've even made some progress.

And then I want to quickly look ahead to 2026, including suggestions by one of our council members uh and and other uh uh points of suggestion that had that have come from others in the community, including our own mayor, that we are definitely taking into account as we go.

So it's a community effort, and we welcome uh feedback.

So thank you very much for that.

Quickly, um so coming back into let me find this thing.

Uh okay, there we go.

So coming uh into this year, there was no such thing or into 2025 as the Discover Gulfport walking trail system.

It is now um up and live on the website, and uh the graphics on it are really something we've put a lot of time and effort into, including both before the launch that happened on November 15th and after to continue tweaking it.

It's in a very easy uh uh site to remember my Gulfport.us slash discover.

Uh and that way anybody can find it, and we have also taken pains to put it into a mobile version that walkers can use, and including that can enable location on that, and then uh you and use the maps as they go, which is really great.

Um so it took a lot of planning and coordination with various entities, and let's see, I'm timing between programs.

Justin tried to help me, and this is all uh so yeah, yeah.

So here we go.

So we created this system of trails.

It's almost nine miles total around Gulfport.

I looked it up, and there are uh I I found in an old article uh approximately a hundred miles of sidewalks total in Gulfport.

Uh some I I saw that uh I can't uh it was just in an article.

But uh I think that with that we went wanted to choose a different systems uh kind of emanating from the inside out, and starting with the red trail, which is the one that became the 1.3 mile trail in the center.

We call it the first discovery loop because that's kind of where people come when they come to Gulfport, and we worked on that, and that uh formed the basis for the first community walk.

Uh and uh quickly I wanted to thank all these different teams that really put a lot into this.

Uh IT and Cultural Facilities, Justin Shea, Kristen Osola, and all of their team were fantastic, as were the um all the people from Department Department of Public Works who I engaged with, Tom Nichols, Kendricks Henderson, John Stirner, and lots of others.

These people were so generous with their time.

I was fully impressed with how much and how proactive all of them were throughout this process that we couldn't have gotten this done without them.

Um and so there was the Red Trail, there's the slightly longer yellow trail, which I'll talk about later, and the Department of Public Works helped us create this signage.

And the Department of Public Works helped us create this signage.

The signage we're very proud of.

It has reflectivity, it's all metal and quality.

And we have all of the color coordination but signs up.

This is a sign that was up before the launch of the walk.

We've made even more progress since then.

So the community walk happened November 15th, and we promoted it.

We had good attendance.

We were very happy to have a hundred plus people there.

And we want to thank Mayor Love and many others for doing this because it became both an a walk, a community walk, and an educational outing with well-planned stops where we were able to expose walkers to different Gulf Port gyms, like the Food Forest.

We had to stop there, we had to stop at the Gulfport History Museum.

The entire group like got treated to much more than just a walk around a neighborhood they might have all kind of strolled through randomly before.

So people really like that.

And I think it was a success.

Since then, we didn't want to lose the momentum.

So since November 15th, that bigger, much bigger yellow, that's 3.3 miles.

I've walked that maybe 60 times now just trying to get it done.

And Department of Public Works pitched in with me and really helped to put the signage up to get all of that posted.

And it we were really, really lucky because now we have yellow and red signs up that mark all these paths throughout the city.

So we have four plus miles of noted walkways, and that's and a lot of the yellow, almost all of the yellow part happened since November 15th.

So we're trying to keep that going.

And again, the Department of Public Works team helped so much.

I've continued to work very closely with cultural facilities on the website.

We keep tweaking the website.

We've made it mobile friendly so people on can use it on their phones.

And if you see something, please let us know if you need have feedback on it.

Because we really do want it to be something that people can continue to use.

And also one other uh group that I forgot to mention, and it's vital to this, is the whole senior center staff led by Rachel Cotaldo.

Rachel took the early lead on this, organized uh, she was the one who liaised with the mayor and and really got all this set up in the first place, the inaugural walk.

So Rachel was huge in this, and also Walter Pauley and others there at the senior center.

So that was another one of these wonderful city groups that I really, really am thankful to have been putting to contact with.

And then so we continue also to field comments from a community.

So please do bring us our your comments.

Mayor Love had one recently.

I've gotten several others.

A lot of people are asking for things like something else we want to do, which is um, well, these are the extension paths.

We're going to have three more paths that are going to be open, and we're going to work on those in 2026.

The Northwest Path path that's up in the marked blue here that goes all the way up to 15th to the where roughly where the funky flamingo is, comes back down.

Remember, everything is on sidewalks, existing sidewalks with crosswalks at busy streets.

And it's meant to be fully accessible and to really uh be something that people can use.

So we also then have the downtown village extension route, which is really adding our commercial district in and also going down to more of uh accessibility on the water, particularly now that all those areas are about to reopen.

So, and you know, there's been so much progress recently on that, it's been really great.

Uh so hopefully that too will be open soon.

And then finally, the third uh extension route for now is the green one, which goes out to Marina and Clan Bayou, another tremendous area.

And we have really um thought a lot about these paths, and hopefully, you know, they can be extended down the road if people want to extend them more.

I mean, this is a beginning, not an ending in terms of where these can go.

Um then one of the suggestions that we've had from several people, I think it's a great one, is to put QR codes up to create QR code signage that goes up just like those little arrows underneath a lot of the signs.

So anyone walking could very quickly access the website on their phone and the map.

So we're looking into that.

So we want in 2026 to explore different collaborations, donations, and grants for items like that QR code, and also for like something that was brought to my attention by council member early, which was creating informational storyboards uh or other information that I hope you don't mind.

I took you the photos you sent me and put them all together here in a collage kind of format where you can see how these can be very useful.

Those have QR codes, they've got numbers on them.

We can turn them into something anything that we want that we feel feel really best represents Gulfport.

So I think that's another great uh potential for this year to look into those.

And then similarly to create even other maybe large maps that could go into the library, the senior center, maybe the history museum, just kind of have the uh given encapsulation of that.

Again, this is something we would try to do using grants um or donations and and others.

So um and you know, we're open to any other suggestions and working with other groups.

We're trying, we're reaching out to entities like the like the history museum, the library, the chamber of commerce, and uh you know other groups that deal with physical activity-oriented uh outings and also accessibility advocacy uh to make sure that we uh and have some trails that we are ultimately proud of down the road.

So uh that's where we are going into 2026.

Wonderful.

Do we have any questions of Brad before he sits down in speaking order?

Councilmember Jackson.

Oh, I don't have any, thank you.

I'm sorry, I forgot I was going first.

I had to look at Councilmember.

No, but thank you for everything that you're doing.

Really it's great.

It's my pleasure, and I have to say this whole I I've had such a good experience with this, and all of these departments in the city have been so easy to work with and so helpful.

I've just been really, really impressed.

So thanks to everybody, and we look forward to 2026.

I I have one comment.

Yes.

Being that you're doing this partially for the aging population, once you're done with all of your maps, it might be good to have a little brochure that could be at the library and the senior center, because a lot of them don't want to use their phone, don't want to use a QR code.

Absolutely.

That's that uh that was something that was in my notes.

I just forgot to mention it.

So thank you for that.

Councilmember Shaw.

I I want to say thank you to you, the committee, and to everybody that worked on it.

It's wonderful.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So Brad, as you were talking um way back in the memory cells here, I realized that um there's a group, I believe this is through um the Florida League of Cities, and there's this opportunity for cities to feature one of the cool things about their city, and you put it out there, and once you put it out there, it's okay if another city wants to take that idea and run with it.

That's really how I got the take two on Tuesday thing going.

Was I saw it uh uh as a featured city, it was uh Jacksonville Beach, and I called them up and said, could I use it?

Anyway, I think what you're doing would be a really good way for us to feature Gulfport as the star city and share that idea.

So let me do my homework and then I'll get back to you.

I I would love that.

And Mayor Sunk Coast League of Cities is also looking for those types of things to feature.

And I and I also mentioned to Brad earlier that I saw uh information about uh a grant.

So uh if we can get that information moving and see how that might fit in.

Dave Mathers is also um found a grant too.

So I'll make sure it's the same one.

So and Dave Mather and the IT team as well.

I was I you know there's so many groups here, it's hard to uh properly recognize all of them, but I really appreciate them.

Thank you so much um to both of you and Karen for coming up.

Oh, she's coming back.

I have more.

Oh, there's there's a coda.

I actually have an ask.

Okay, you're being taped here.

So um the senior advisory committee would uh wants to ask city council to consider allowing resolution 92-12 to sunset, and we have reasons for that, similar to the team council when they requested sunsetting.

Um we have a hard time getting a quorum.

We meet early.

Um I cannot remember how many are required.

Five.

Five people are required for the quorum.

A lot of times we can't raise that quorum, and then we can't get anything done.

Um another sticking point is sunshine law.

We are bound by the same sunshine law as any city committee and city council, which makes it difficult.

We're friends.

We want to talk about things, and it can make it can make life difficult to cultivate those friendships and outside conversations.

And we also think it'll be more fun a fix more efficient functionality.

In terms of all of the things that I just mentioned, including the things that Brad is doing.

And by the way, my house is on the yellow tour.

Just delighted.

Anyway, of course, we will stay true to our mission of liaising between the senior community and the city, working with Rachel, and coming up with more brilliant ideas like Brad's brilliant idea.

So we're just asking you to consider it, maybe come up with a resolution or save it for another day.

Thank you so much.

Okay.

Thanks for bringing that up.

I know I would like to talk to the city attorney about it and just see from his point of view the pros and cons, and then we can um discuss it at a council meeting.

Absolutely.

Are there any questions for me?

Okay.

Thank you.

Well, thanks.

All righty.

And now our third presentation that we've been waiting on and excited to hear will be given by Mr.

Justin Keller as well as Mr.

Cody Stewart.

And they are with Advanced Engineering, and they will be giving us a presentation on the results of our three-year vulnerability study.

Thank you.

Okay.

Justin Keller with Advanced Engineering, um, here with Cody Stewart.

Uh, before I pass it off, I do want to go ahead and give a brief update on uh some of the recent um action going on for the watershed management plan.

Um back in November we met twice um on consecutive weeks in order to discuss it and then to kind of have a um let's say uh additional com or additional discussion with the uh with the city team and the uh the council.

Um so right now uh we have completed the recovery floodplains, which was um I believe a request of uh of a councilmember Thanos.

Um and then two, we've been looking at um creating alternates and additional projects.

And uh one of the big uh takeaways from that uh meeting was that the city wanted us to revisit the use of green space for stormwater management.

Um so we've done that in three locations.

We've um we we are proposing an alternate to BMP one, which is the um the uh climber park project, and essentially we're gonna we are you know gonna be presenting uh not today but just in in the report as far as um how we can use climber park for stormwater management in order to reduce the uh size of the outfall that comes down 53rd uh or 54th, I believe.

Um and then um also um for BMP3 looking at uh using Yolanda Park there around the corner and and doing some roadway regrading um uh to make sure that the um stormwater is being captured in the most efficient manner.

Um, and then also to um and um we also added another project.

Uh there was the discussion on uh the city purchasing a property near Wood Ibis Park at the intersection of 26th and 59th, and so uh we are looking at how that site could possibly be used for stormwater management better management.

Do you mean 27th and 59th?

I apologize for that.

That's okay.

Yeah, so um close.

So um uh but it's not horseshoes, so I hear you.

Um so uh so essentially what we're doing is that based on we are gonna keep the core projects that we presented initially, so instead of getting five, there's gonna be nine that we're gonna be pricing, and essentially, you know, the goal of that is the city would have these kind of standalone project documents and pricing that if you want to rip it out and submit it for a grant application, it's there and it's ready to go.

How soon will we have that?

So our our goal is to have the re the the re revised report to uh Tom's team by the end of the month.

Okay, because I know there's adaptations and grant timing.

Yeah, well, so so and we we are definitely gonna hit on that today.

Thankfully, that that window is July through September.

Um and that is one thing that we are recommending, but I'm not I'm not gonna steal that slide from Cody.

Um and and then also, too, I do want to let you know that um in a couple of the projects, well, really big picture.

We identified the um the PYCC area as a critical location that takes a lot of the runoff uh from from the city.

And so we propose two projects that would impact that community.

So we have uh meeting scheduled here in the next week or so to sit down with with them and discuss um, you know, kind of high not logistics because we're not at that stage yet, but just high level what what something like that would look like.

Um and so certainly the feedback that we get at that meeting would would kind of shape and and morph uh any project that we would present um you know within the report.

And then I did want to kind of also start off with this WMP update because it is important that we kind of transition to the vulnerability assessment.

So while there are a lot of similarities, we're talking about weather threats and all that, they are really two different studies.

The WP kind of looks at today, looks at what could be coming down the future in the immediate future and says, okay, how do we prepare for these you know everyday occurrences, the things that we know, and also these larger storm events.

The VA takes that to the extreme, admittedly.

And it looks at more 2040, 2070, 2100, looks at more extreme events.

And really the goal of the WMP is to give you these projects that you could implement right away.

The goal of the VA is to kind of start this discussion on long-term planning.

What is the community look like in this scenario?

And really, so I just wanted to kind of preface that you know, before before we move forward, to let you know that the maps are going to look a lot different.

Um the scenarios are a lot more severe, but again, it's done for a reason because the goal of this is to try to set the baseline for kind of what we're planning for moving forward.

So, and with that, thank you.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and the rest of the council and everyone else here joining us today.

Um my name is Cody Stewart, I'm the director of resilience and sustainability at Advanced Engineering and Design.

And before I get started with the presentation, um, some of you may have already saw, but one of the requirements that FDEP has for this grant is for us to submit a sign-in sheet of everyone here that's present for the meeting.

So there was one up here, and then there's one in the back.

If you guys can please sign in, um, just so that we have a record of everyone here in attendance.

Does do we know where it is in the back?

Does anybody got it?

Okay, perfect, thank you.

And if we need another sheet or a pen, please let me know.

So today I'm going to, and thank you, Justin, for uh highlighting the differences between the WMP and the vulnerability assessment.

So this presentation will focus on the vulnerability assessment um for the city.

Oops.

Let's see here.

Oh, that is not what I wanted to do.

Thank you.

And that on my set just down.

Yep.

Oh, there we go.

I just had to hit it with more.

Thank you.

So this presentation, this is a brief outline of what we're going to go over today.

Um, some acknowledgments, an introduction to vulnerability assessments and the components of vulnerability assessments, including an asset inventory, an exposure analysis, a sensitivity analysis, some high-level adaptation strategies, and then next steps.

I think eventually.

Maybe I'll try clicking.

Well, clicking go next to.

It should.

Okay.

Um so first and foremost, some acknowledgments.

Um I would like to thank the City of Gulfport, city staff, and city council for being in support of pursuing the funding and actually conducting the vulnerability assessment.

I've been working a lot with uh Tom and Kendricks and Dwayne on the different assets.

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection for 100% funding this particular study and all the grant managers, planning reviewers, and GIS reviewers that go through all the deliverables as part of the VA.

And then, of course, our team at AED, including myself, Justin Keller, RAF, and Mark.

And one of the first things I want to do before we get into what is a VA is to sort of frame where the VA falls on the resiliency journey.

So this figure, which I stole from the Florida adaptation planning handbook and modified it a little bit, um, highlights a roadmap here, and you can see that there are three main checkpoints.

You have the vulnerability assessment, the adaptation plan, and the implementation plan.

One of the things I added at the top is we were doing the watershed management plan sort of concurrent with the vulnerability assessment.

But as we want to focus on are the three large circles.

So on your resiliency journey, the first thing that you have to do is the vulnerability assessment, which is what we're talking about here today.

In this particular checkpoint along the road, you are identifying the opportunities that your city has.

After you complete this step, which you can see that we are here, so we're finishing the vulnerability assessment and the water uh watershed management plan.

The next step is the adaptation plan.

In your adaptation plan, you then start to develop strategies to address the opportunities that your vulnerability assessment highlights for your community.

And then following that, you have the actual implementation plan to where you actually execute those solutions that you came up with in the adaptation plan, including you know, projects, um, looking for different funding for projects and things of that nature.

Not that that can't take place prior to then, but this is generally how the resiliency journey is laid out.

Now to talk more about VAs in particular.

Maybe.

Thank you, Teresa.

I don't know why it's there.

So what is a VA?

So, in short, a VA is a state, is a state-sponsored study that looks at all of the critical assets within a city boundary.

Now, one of the things to highlight, which I've hit on a couple other points in the presentation, is critical assets.

So critical assets, FDEP doesn't, they provide some guidance in terms of different asset classes and asset types that are critical, but you're going to see assets in this vulnerability assessment that aren't the city of Gulfport's assets.

It's going to be all critical assets within the city of Gulfport boundary, so to speak, city boundary or city limits.

So those are going to be included in this study.

And VAs are aimed to enhance Florida's ability to recover from future disasters.

How do we make Florida as a whole more resilient?

So the data from each of these local vulnerability assessments is then pulled up into a much larger state assessment.

VAs can differ from area to area, but all VAs are generally going to include three primary components.

An asset inventory to where you gather all the assets within a project boundary, an exposure analysis to where you then expose your project boundary to all of the different flood scenarios that are included within your VA.

And then the third component, which is sensitivity analysis, and that's when you bring your assets into the mix with the exposure analysis.

So why did we do a VA?

Referencing back to the map that we shared earlier, vulnerability assessments are a foundational step to community resilience or community hardening.

But in addition to that, VAs are mandatory for local governments who want to pursue implementation project funding through FDEP.

So in the process of doing a VA, you become eligible for resilient Florida dollars at a 50% match to do projects that could come out of your VA.

And then thirdly, as talked about at the beginning of this presentation, this VA was 100% funded through the resilient Florida grant program as a planning grant.

Planning grants are 100%, there's no match, whereas implementation is 50% match.

So to talk about the first component, which is asset inventory.

So in this particular component, you gather all of the FDEP defined critical assets within your project boundary.

FDEP provides four different asset classes for us to look at whenever we're gathering these assets.

The first two assets, sorry by the way, I'm looking over here, so I'm spreading out.

The first two asset classes that they provide us with two gather assets in our critical community and emergency facility assets, which in the city of Gulfport's VA, excuse me, included colleges and universities, community centers, emergency medical service facilities, emergency operation centers, fire stations, healthcare facilities, local government facilities, pharmacies, police stations, and schools.

And again, you're seeing assets here that aren't necessarily city of Gulfport owned assets, but defined by the FTEP as critical assets.

And then the second asset class that FDEP provides is critical infrastructure.

So in the city's VA, this included communication facilities, disaster debris management sites, lift stations, solid waste facilities, stormwater major outfalls, and stormwater outfalls.

Thank you.

And then the last two of the four asset classes that FDEP provides are natural cultural and historical resources.

So in this particular asset class, we have the following asset types.

We have surface waters, we have wetlands, conservation lands, cemeteries, Florida heritage sites, national registered historic places, parks, and shorelines.

And then in the final asset class, we have transportation and evacuation routes, and in then this asset class, we only have two asset types, which are major roadways and marinas.

One thing to note on all four of these slides before we go to the next slide, is some of these have asterisks.

These are ones that I know for a fact apply, but the number in brackets apply is representing the number of objects in GIS that are assigned to that particular asset, how or that feature class.

However, objects aren't necessarily directly applicable to assets.

So you don't necessarily have 26 surface waters or 12 wetlands included in the VA, but those are objects that exist in GIS that represent the assets that you have.

So that sums up asset inventory.

So the next component is exposure analysis.

So again, in the exposure analysis, we take all of the scenarios that are included in your VA, which I'll outline those, but there's 21 of them.

And we then, after we create those scenarios using your model or your double your WMP, we then take those and then we expose the city boundary to all of those events to determine what the impact is to the city.

So the three different flood threats that we're evaluating when we do that are sea level rise, storm surge, and rainfall.

So when we think of sea level rise, that would be water that comes ashore as the height of the water along the coastline increases.

We think of storm surge, that would be water that comes ashore with hurricanes and tropical storms.

And we think of rainfall, we think of water that comes down from the atmosphere onto the surface.

Now the one thing to note with rainfall is in the VA, we coupled rainfall with sea level rise.

So that your rainfall, your 100 year, and your 500 year storm events also include the sea level rise conditions with those, which that'll become evident when we start looking at some maps.

So again, the city's VA consisted of 21 different scenarios.

So we have five sea level rise scenarios, we have six storm surge scenarios, and we have ten rainfall scenarios.

Your planning horizons, which this then begins to start the path of diversion between your VA and your WMP.

Your planning horizons are anywhere from current conditions, which we have that included with storm surge, to 2040, 2070, and 2100.

So for sea level rise and for rainfall, you'll see that we have everywhere from 2040 to 2100 represented.

Well, rather 2040, 2070, 2100.

And then for the individual scenarios associated with each of those, we have intermediate low and intermediate high.

One thing to touch on there is your VA used the NOAA 2017 projections, which of those projections there were six.

So you have low, intermediate low, low, intermediate high, high, and extreme.

FDEP requires that we use intermediate low and intermediate high.

And they also require that we look at 2040 and 2070, which is why those were included in your particular VA.

And then the storm events, so the final column in this flood scenario table is just talking about the return period.

So we have both the 100 year and 500 year rainfall events and a 100 year storm surge event that was included within your VA.

And then this presentation for brevity is only going to include maps of the ones in the red boxes.

So I'm going to show you worst-case scenario, so don't get too scared when you see these maps.

But I'll go over the coverages of all the scenarios.

So just a quick question.

Because these are the most obvious things that would happen to us, but we don't have to take into account fire or wind.

For the vulnerability assessments, no, they focus predominantly on, well, only on the most obvious thing that you can do.

Just sea level rise, storm surge and rainfall, correct.

Thank you.

And again, this will help explain some of the differences between the WMP and the VA, but also to kind of calibrate everything that you're seeing to what you're seeing in current day.

So this figure shows the tidal conditions that the city of Gulfport experienced in the year of 2025 from beginning to end.

That red line that's on there represents the tailwater condition that was utilized in your WMP, which is 1.78 feet.

So then the purpose of this figure is to show that there were only 4.8 hours throughout the year that the city was experienced tidal conditions over what was in the WMP.

Now in the next figure, we'll see that same red line is down at the bottom.

So that represents the tailwater condition, and these tailwater conditions come from those projections.

So the tailwater condition that was utilized in the WMP is represented by that red line.

All of those other lines represent what you're going to be seeing for the tailwater conditions we utilized in your VA.

So that the next line above the red line, that's your 2040 intermediate low with two feet added.

So the reason why two feet were added is FDEP requires us to add two feet as part of their requirements to get a compliant VA, which is why there's such a jump.

So all of those values, if you were to look them up, would be two feet less.

But in your VA, we've added two feet again as an FDEP requirement.

But your 2040 intermediate low then would be a 3.69 feet and all the way up to your 2100 intermediate high, which is at 9.1 feet.

So the scenarios you're seeing are much more extreme than what you would have saw in your WMP.

And this is why.

Can you define tailwater for people who might not have been here for other things?

Sure.

So your tailwater conditions, I guess the easiest way to look at it would be that this is where we're saying the water level is on your coastline.

So your tailwater condition.

So in the exposure analysis results, again, you're seeing the most extreme scenarios in these figures, but this would start with sea level rise.

And then percent coverage is literal.

So there's not, whenever you see a floodplain on the map, there's not necessarily an associated depth with it on these maps.

It's just meaning that there's coverage there.

So for sea level rise, again, we cover everywhere from 2040 intermediate low to 2100 intermediate high.

Our percent coverage ranges from 8% to 32%.

Again, worst case scenario being 2100 intermediate high, to where we can see that predominantly the coastal areas of Gulfport, which makes sense since we're looking at sea level rise, are impacted by this particular scenario.

And then for storm surge, this is the scariest one.

For storm surge, 2100 intermediate high.

Again, this is worst case scenario, is what you're seeing on the map, shows 73% coverage.

Current day would be 44%, and then the 2040 intermediate low starts at 47%, and then it creeps up to that 73% that you're seeing in the map.

And then we have two different rainfall scenarios represented.

This is the first of the two.

This is the 100 year storm event.

You're going to see the same impacts as you saw for sea level rise, which is why you all that coastal area is covered because we coupled your sea level rise project or your sea level rise scenarios with your rainfall scenarios.

So you'll still see the same coastal areas are impacted, but now you see more inland areas being impacted in the 100 year rainfall event.

So in the 2100 intermediate high scenario, 100 year rainfall event, we see 41% coverage, but the range here is anywhere from 21% with your 2040 intermediate low to 41% with your 2100 intermediate high.

And then to wrap up exposure analysis, this is the last event that we'll show you today, which is your 500 year rainfall event.

In your 500 year rainfall event, you're going to see anywhere from 27% coverage with your 2040 intermediate low scenario all the way to 44% with your 2100 intermediate high scenario.

And Cody, is all this that you're doing is assuming that we have don't take any action to our stormwater systems that we're looking at now.

Is that safe to say?

So this is if we did nothing.

Yes.

Okay.

So we still have time to save ourselves.

Absolutely.

Okay.

This is only the first step of the resiliency journey.

And again, to keep in mind, you were looking at worst-case scenario on the map.

So it's interesting that 100 to 500 year isn't really significantly different.

41 to 40%.

Between the two.

I mean, yeah, you're looking at a 1% annual chance versus a half percent annual chance.

So now we've covered asset inventory, which again is just where we've gathered all the assets within, well, all the critical assets that FDEP defines within your city boundary, and then we just went over exposure.

So then we have those 21 scenarios, we put the tailwater conditions in your model, your WMP, we run those, and then we see how those fall over your city.

Sensitivity analysis is where we take those two things and we put them together.

So we now have all of your floodplains with all your flood depths across the city, and then we put your assets on top, and we see how then each of those scenarios impacts each of your individual assets.

So a quick review so that you guys can get a little bit of an appreciation for what sensitivity analysis does.

I feel like that makes it sound very simple.

But the city's VA includes 27 feature classes, which FTEP would call those asset types.

And within those asset types, there's over 1,000 unique objects.

So meaning that a quick way to look at this, so say that lift stations is a feature class or an asset type.

Your objects would be each individual lift station that are represented within that asset type.

So in the city's VA, we have 1,100, almost 1100 unique objects.

So we just went over how many scenarios that are included in your VA, which was 21.

So again, we have the five sea level rise, the six storm surge, and then the 10 rainfall events, five for 100 years, and five for 500 years.

That would result in almost 23,000 data points.

And is what that would represent is an individual depth for each of those objects across all 21 scenarios.

So we needed to develop a method for making this data digestible and actionable.

Our solution to that was C score.

And before we go into C score, I just wanted to show you a preview of what this spreadsheet looks like.

I'm glad I'm not the only one.

So this spreadsheet, now granted, majority of this analysis takes place in GIS, which is a program that we can pull in maps and rasters and do all this kind of analysis in.

And using utilizing outputs from your WMP.

So this is a spreadsheet version of what one of the tables in the GIS would look like.

And on this table, so we have the first column, you have asset type, then you have asset class.

Asset ID is just a unique ID we assign to each one of those individual objects so that we can keep them separate.

And then the Dem Z value, so that's its current land elevation.

So that is where it sits.

And then we have your scenario column.

So for every one of those 21 scenarios, you'll see two headings.

Now this is only a snippet of part of the table.

This isn't the whole table.

Um top of golf port, this is the water elo.

So this is the elevation of that.

And then your depth is the difference between the flood elevation and the land elevation.

And that's what your D column is.

So then we have 42 columns representing each of those flood scenarios, and then we would have a row representing each of those 1,086 objects.

Just to give you some appreciation of all the data that we have to go through for your sensitivity analysis.

Next slide, please, thank you.

So what is C score?

I said it helps us look at all of this data and make it easier to understand.

So C score is an acronym.

It stands for submersible, essential, and amplitude.

And to kind of help get an understanding of what it does, I walked, I'm gonna walk you through two examples.

So if we look at the picture on the left, um it's a park bench.

We'll we'll think of that area as a park, and the picture on a right, a fire truck with a fire station, so we'll think of that as a fire station.

Each one of those acronyms, so submersible, essential, and amplitude is assigned a score from zero to five.

And the next few slides will walk through what that would look like for these two examples.

So a park versus a fire station.

So when we think of submersible, um a question we can ask ourselves is can it be underwater?

How sensitive is it to water?

Now I think ideally we wouldn't want our park or our fire station to be submerged underwater.

However, I think we would agree that if both were submerged and then that water subsided, the fire department would be impacted at a much greater rate than what the park would be.

So to highlight this in your particular, in the city's VA, rather, the submersible score, so the higher that score is the more sensitive an asset is to water, and then the lower that score is the less sensitive.

So a park, for instance, would be a two, whereas a fire station would be a four.

And granted, these are on a five, a zero to five scale.

So that's the first component of the C score, which is the submersible score.

So what would be a one?

A pond.

Um surface water is, yeah, surface water is something that yeah, you could look at as being one.

So whenever you're looking at essential, um, something that you can ask yourself, which I think this one's a little more easy to understand, but is this asset important?

So again, zero to five scale.

Whenever you're looking at a park and a fire station, I believe in this particular example, the numbers are actually the same for these two.

It would also be a two and a four.

And then for amplitude, amplitude is the one that gets a little bit um trickier.

So amplitude is based on how bad an asset floods.

So in the zero to five scale, it's still easy to understand because the more something floods, so across those 21 scenarios, the greater depth that something floods at, the more severe that score, so closer to five.

If something doesn't flood at all across all 21 scenarios, it'd be closer to zero.

Now on the back side is how amplitude is actually calculated, is it looks at all of the flood depths across all the scenarios for each asset.

It takes all the zeros out, and then it looks at that, all of those data points, and it breaks it into five buckets.

So five uh so then everything that is towards the top of that bucket would be a five, everything that's towards the bottom of that bucket would be a one, and then anything from two, three, and four would be assigned in between.

But again, looking at the distribution of that data.

So now that you have an idea of what each of those components represents, this is how the Rossi score for every object in your VA is calculated.

So it looks at three, we have the option to add three different weights.

One weight for submersible, one weight for essential, and one weight for amplitude.

So this gives us the ability to make one of these worth more than the others, and we can change how they're valued.

But all three of those weight values have to add to one.

So then that means your C score for every single asset is anywhere from zero to five.

And then we take those weights and we multiply them by their component of the C score rather than submersible essential or amplitude, and then we add all three of those components together to get your final C score.

And one of the things to highlight as to what advantage you get with the C-score is if you don't have a process to where you include how sensitive an asset is to water or how important an asset is, the only way in which you can rank assets is purely based on the depth of impact.

And if you have a park that floods all the time, but you only have a fire station that say that floods in that worst case scenario that we've shown up there.

It could be that that park comes across as being more important or more of a priority because it floods more.

C-score gives you the ability to say, I recognize that that park floods a lot, but we think that our fire station is more critical.

So therefore we would like to prioritize our fire station.

So once all of that comes together, um we are able to generate a map similar to the one that you're seeing here.

So this map, one of the things important things to note is shorelines are not on this map.

So shorelines represent a lot of points for the city's vulnerability assessment.

So there would be a bunch of points along your coast.

If those were shown, I didn't show it because I made it look very busy.

Um so shorelines are not on this map.

But with those C scores, again ranging from zero to five, we then colored them based on three different risk levels or three different categories.

Now, this three different category classification is something that FDEP requires us to do as part of the sensitivity analysis.

So we said any object that scores from a zero to a 1.5 on a five scale is a low, so then it would be a green dot.

Anything that scores from a 1.5 to a 3.5 would be a medium or a yellow dot, and then anything that scores from a 3.5 to a 5 would be a high risk level or a red dot.

So in the VA, we identified using this particular breakdown, 12 objects that were high, 38 that were medium, and then a thousand and thirty-two objects that were low.

Now that includes these shorelines that aren't represented on this map.

Now your top assets that were included in your VA, granted, these are going to include assets that aren't necessarily city owned, happen to be five lift stations that are county lift stations.

That are what did you say?

They're county, so they're Pinellis County lift stations.

Are those the ones that are sorry go back two, please?

Well, actually, no, you can stay on the slide.

Oh, are those the ones that are over in here?

So yes, those are counting.

Okay.

And because these are our lift stations.

So you have one down where your pen was.

And yes, and then the other one is the other red dot on the right.

Yes.

And then what are those two?

Oh, the casino?

Casino is one.

Direct center.

Would be there.

What's that one?

The one behind the casino.

Post office.

Thank you, Justin.

No, but in the VA.

And then that's the.

Which it was identified as being critical.

Look.

And then that must be city hall.

Yes.

And then that whole this whole little ribbon.

So one of the things that we're going to add is I'm going to add points for that portion of roadway that's presently not included.

But I'm going to add that in.

And what are the green kind of things?

What types of things are green?

So green things would include surface waters, it would include wetlands, it would include on your, let me pull up.

So I can see these better.

Parks, historical and cultural assets.

So a lot of your natural, your sort of natural assets are going to be coming up as green.

And that's because they're not as essential.

And all those little yellow lines that are on 58th and 15th and 28th.

Those represent the street.

But are they like they're not stop signs because we don't have that many?

Are they you know sewer entrances or something?

They are not.

So I'm glad you brought this up actually.

This is something I wouldn't have explained unless you asked.

Um so whenever we do these analyses, because we need to take all of these assets that exist in GIS, and we need to figure out how they're impacted by each of these scenarios.

We need to get a particular land elevation assigned to those assets.

So with linear assets, one of the easiest ways to do that is to convert linear assets or polylines on GIS to points, and then that particular point in space is where I pull that land elevation value so that I can then see how it is impacted by those different scenario depths.

So in short, those points necessarily anything in space, they just represent points along the segments that represent the roadway.

So like houses and stuff that are along there.

Or anything.

It could, but the points don't necessarily correlate to that.

That is just the point in which I took an elevation to represent that point on the roadway.

Okay.

So all those points are medium.

It looks like they're correct, they're all yellow.

Okay.

And then this slide, the map is the exactly.

Sorry, go back one more.

No, it's okay.

Um so the map is the same.

Go forward one now.

And thank you for doing this for me.

Um the map is exactly the same.

So the map hasn't changed.

All I did here was take out some assets that are the city of golf ports to list those, since your top five most severe ranked were um Pinellas County assets.

So your two lift stations, which as um Vice Mayor pointed out, are red on this map.

So those are two that are on there.

Your police department is of a priority, and then your fire station and EMS, these are actually represented as two separate assets, even though they're in the same location.

And then, of course, the casino is on there.

And there are more.

This is just to give you an idea of sort of five prioritized assets.

So now that I've scared you all and I've showed you some scary maps of these 21 different scenarios and your assets and sort of how they ranked and their sensitivity or vulnerability to these different conditions, let's get into some adaptation strategies.

So with adaptation strategies, now granted these are high level, so these haven't been um fully worked out, you would get into more of these in an actual adaptation plan.

But you have upland area strategies, which could include things like expanding existing pipe networks, minimizing the use of impervious surfaces, strategic land allocation for mitigation, and of course a combination of those options.

Now, this presentation is gonna focus more on the coastal area strategies given the nature of what a VA is.

So for the coastal area strategies, you have three um predominant options, and of course the fourth being a combination of those, which in short are vacate, elevate, and isolate.

So with vacate, you would have we, as the the mayor asked earlier, is this seeing if we do nothing?

Um, or is this seeing with some sort of improvements?

And all the figures that we represent here today are assuming we do nothing.

Um so then if you do nothing, then you would cede the land.

So then you would give up the land that is being impacted by these scenarios.

Second option would be elevate, which you could utilize fill to increase elevation.

So keep in mind the the VAs, again, speaking to this land elevation, water elevation, the depths that we're getting for each of these scenarios are truly just the difference between the land elevation of an asset minus, or sorry, be the water elevation from a particular scenario minus the land elevation of the asset.

So minimizing that difference would improve um the impact to an asset across these different scenarios.

And then the last option here that we're gonna talk about today is isolate.

So that would be the installation of stormwater pump stations and strategic locations.

And of course a combination of those.

So granted, with the first option, vacate, do nothing, you see the land.

So I just brought back the um sea level rise 2100 intermediate high.

Granted, worst case scenario, um that was covered in your VA.

But if you do nothing, and then this projection were to become a reality, then you would lose um access to those parts of golf port.

Because even if people elevated their homes, there'd be no roads to their houses and things like that, right?

So part of the second option, elevating is you would have to do just that.

You would have to elevate both homes and public infrastructure together.

Now it wouldn't necessarily have to happen all at once, but the plan would have to be to do those in conjunction.

Kind of what Treasure Island looking at.

Correct.

And then elevate, as the vice mayor pointed out, would be to utilize fill to elevate the ground beneath not only single family homes, but also public infrastructure.

And then by altering the physical terrain over time, we could protect against tidal flooding and maintain a stormwater level of service again by minimizing that difference between a flood elevation and a land elevation by increasing the land elevation.

And then for the third option, Justin's gonna come up and he's gonna talk about isolate, which is stormwater pump stations.

So I figured it'd be prudent.

Um we talked about stormwater pump stations for the watershed management plan.

And we talked about that being a uh let's say a strategy that we looked at, but we determined that really wouldn't be prudent for a lot of the unique situations that are handled in a golf port.

So I didn't want to have this up here and be like, well, wait a second, that guy said no stormwater pump stations.

Um so really what what this is well, we talk about isolating, okay.

As Cody mentioned, we talked about tailwater and how water comes up through the pipes.

All right.

So in these events that we're talking about, 2070, 2100, some of these more immediate or some of these more severe scenarios, um, you're at a point to where if you do not elevate and the water is pretty much overtopping your seawalls, you at some point in time the option would be to isolate yourself from the source.

Cut off from the source, no gravity, go full pump stations.

Um for the city, right now, we've identified that one of the big challenges you have is uncontrolled runoff for starting from the northeast area of your city and going southwest to this low-line area that is being impacted by sea level rise as we speak today.

Um so when we look at a pump station, it's one thing to say this area, this little drainage area has a pump station, and you know, we want to isolate it and we want to pump out of that area.

But what the watershed management plan does in this citywide model is it shows us that, well, the problem we're seeing here manifests itself up here.

So why are we sitting here trying to spend all this money to build this big pump station to pump our way out of a problem that's happening half a mile upgradient?

And so you know, I think when we look at things like these maps that paint a pretty crappy picture, um, we want to make sure that we do not take options off the table right away.

When we talk about stormwater improvements that we can pursue in the next five to ten years, that's a different subject.

And so I just want to provide some clarity as to why, let's say the recommendations that we would talk about in the WMP don't align with, let's say, some of the high-level adaptation strategies that you may need to look at in the future.

Now, from a stormwater pump station standpoint, a stormwater pump station could can do different things.

Okay.

The watershed management plan when when we propose a project, we want to say you have a problem here, and it changes your level service, and that's what we talked about as far as what the city accepts for flooding, it changes your level of service from a path from a fail to a pass.

That's what we want when we spend millions of dollars.

So if a pump station doesn't do that, it's not a good fix right now.

But in the future, if we start saying, you know what, maybe we'll allow for two hours of flooding over nine inches.

Maybe we'll, you know, maybe we'll allow for four.

Maybe we'll change the requirements and we'll change what we accept, and we'll allow for more flooding, and that's really more of a planning effort, and that's where we'll kind of the adaptation plan comes in.

That's where, okay, if you if if we kind of change what the goal is, if we change the target, then more options could possibly be available.

Now, you know, again, I'm I'm just kind of trying to highlight how for you right now, we think pump stations, you know, oh we uh we think the the funds that are available are best placed addressing or pursuing the projects that we've identified already, and we will continue to identify those four additional ones.

But we shouldn't take anything off the table when we're looking at impacts as drastic, is what we're talking about.

So here's what I'm hearing you say.

And it was really really helpful for me uh with the past study when you identified that so much of our flooding is really happening further north and coming down here.

It's not just tidal coming up.

So that really helped me.

So what I'm hearing you say is for us to start working as soon as we can and stopping some of this major water that's coming over the land from ever getting down to our shoreline.

And to take care of a lot of these types of projects, I'm I'm just throwing out a number over the next 10 years, then we might look at it again and say, but this one this one section here has not been helped.

Then we might look at it again and say, but this one this one section here has not been helped.

And maybe we look at a pump station at that point or no, I mean that I mean big big picture when when we are looking at maps like this, it'd be crazy for us to say, let's not even look at it, right?

Like we we can't do that.

Now right now when we're looking at improving level service for for today for the next five, ten years, we need to make sure that we're spending our money in a way that helps the problem and we're not pretty much trying to, you know, let's say shovel or you know, collect water from a bucket at the bottom of the hill, right?

The water just keeps on coming, it keeps on coming.

We got a control at the top.

And part of what our projects propose is starting to address some of those inefficiencies, like like BMP one, where we talk about putting the big box culvert down uh down down 53rd.

Well, part of that water that right now, if it doesn't, you know, if that project doesn't get constructed, part of that water around where we're standing right here eventually cascades over and goes down to that area.

Right.

So if we can kind of take this area and carve out that excess water and get out of the bay.

All right, well, that's a notch on our belt, that's a victory.

Now we move forward.

And so now once we get to a point to where these extreme runoff scenarios are controlled, then we circle back and say, okay, now we can really focus on this area.

Now that we've kind of taken all the other problems away from it, and now we're just focused on that area itself.

Exactly.

And so I heard you say, you know, in order to work on a fix, you're required to have a vulnerability study.

So how long would we consider that this vulnerability study is appropriate?

I mean, you just took us, you know, 65 years out or something.

So how how often would you want to have another study to reevaluate where you are after we've made 10 or 15 years of improvements?

You know, at what point is that the norm?

I don't know if we ever had one before.

I'm not saying we did or we didn't.

No, no.

Okay.

So there's there's um, let's say there's two competing line of thoughts here, okay.

I'm gonna take the financial one, all right.

And I'm gonna say that any time the DEP says that you are out of compliance and not eligible for the grant funds, you do it.

You do it.

Okay.

Now good answer.

Now and you know, because really you've you know, you you you know, pretty much um, you know, the city has gotten a grant, everything's been paid for 100% by the state.

Now you're eligible for this pot of money.

Is there are updated sea level rise scenarios out there, okay?

And it changes some of the it changes some of the numbers.

Does it matter moving forward if oh wow, that crappy surge chart changed half a foot, right?

I mean, it's it, you know, I mean, we're engineers, we love studies, but does it really benefit you?

No.

What benefits you is making sure that you are maintaining compliance with DEP, and if you're maintaining compliance with DEP, you're you're you're in the room for that pot of money.

And that's really that's really when I think you should pursue getting it updated, just to make sure, you know, because you can, you know, I I think we find people sometimes getting themselves in these study loops, you know.

Oh, something changed, study again, study again.

You know, I think let's let's kind of follow the money.

Let's let's follow DEP.

There's an opportunity now to get adaptation funds, which which Cody will talk about later, and you know, uh you know, you are eligible to move forward for implementation projects.

And so I'd say until we're told the study's not good enough, this provides you the information that you would need to the level you would need to make decisions about your 2070 and your 2100.

Thank you.

Because it's gonna take a long time to get the money and get the projects done.

No, well, and and I'm I'm really glad you said that because the one thing when when we look at this, these maps, it's it's not a you know, it's it's not a code, it's not a project, it's it's both.

You know, there's there's nothing we can build to stop it, and there's nothing we can write in a code to stop it.

It's gonna take both of those working together in order to truly make these scenarios liveable.

So thank you.

So next steps.

Again, I wanted to pull you back to this particular roadmap.

So we've covered that when looking at your resiliency journey, that there are these three main checkpoints along the way.

And sorry to sound like a broken record.

Um, but with those, the three main components, your vulnerability assessment, your adaptation plan, and your implementation plan.

Again, predominant difference between these is that in a VA, you identify your opportunities or your challenges that you face.

In your adaptation plan, you focus on developing strategies that would address those opportunities that you found in your vulnerability assessment.

And then in your implementation plan is when you actually execute those solutions.

So we are, I have the we are here marked.

So this would this is the presentation of your final vulnerability assessment.

So as we're wrapping up your final report.

Your VA then is concluded.

So the obvious next step on the roadway would be an adaptation plan.

So it is our recommendation that the city pursue an adaptation and implementation plan.

They can be pursued independently.

That would include the following.

So assignment of focus areas.

So vulnerability assessments, pretty much everything ties back to an asset.

So we have all these different scenarios, and I showed you all the maps that you you can see all that flooding, but everything in your VA is pretty much gonna tie back to a particular asset.

If there are areas in which that you know you would like to address flooding in, but maybe there's not a critical asset, so to speak in that particular area, as part of your adaptation plan, you can isolate focus areas and say that I want to look at additional assets here.

And then in those focused areas, we can incorporate additional, maybe not necessarily FDEP defined, but it may be critical to the local community.

Um assets in those local areas.

And then in part of doing that process, we could also do a prioritization of adaptation needs.

So this presentation would highlight, and you know, the WMP highlighted a lot of different opportunities that the city has that they can address different problems in.

Part of an adaptation plan is prioritizing what those needs are.

So we can't address this all at one time, so what order in which do we tackle these needs?

And then again, identifying adaptation strategies.

Could be incorporating new ones or exploring the three that we talked about further today.

And then lastly, as Justin pointed out, the solutions to these problems are both codes and projects.

So implementing then or integrating rather what you find, your findings from the adaptation plan and implementation plan into existing plans and codes to help the city move forward to address the concerns that were identified in your vulnerability assessment.

And then oh sorry, go ahead.

When they're doing the adaptation study and the implementation part of that, would they then look at our stormwater study too to see what the plans are there or the theory?

It could certainly be part of it to look at that, correct.

So with that, um, before I get to questions and comments, sorry, I jumped ahead a little bit.

Um no, no, no, it's okay.

So your vulnerability assessment was a plan and grant, so 100% funded.

And doing the VA makes you eligible for implementation funding.

So that's that 50% match for projects.

An adaptation plan and implementation plan are also classified under the planning grant category, so therefore they would also be paid for 100% by the state.

And we would happily help the city with the grant and the study if they'd be interested in pursuing that.

And that is our recommendation to the city is ultimately to take the next step on that resiliency journey and do the um the adaptation and implementation plan.

All right, now that is all I have for you.

So do you guys have any questions or comments for us?

We'll go in speaking order.

I have no questions or comments.

Thank you, Cody.

Thank you, Justin.

Thank you.

Um I don't either.

Awesome, thank you.

I hope that even means I I I did a really good job at explaining it.

Not that you were born to death.

Preamble, right?

So we're all studied off, I think.

Go ahead.

So will we have access to these slides?

Absolutely.

And then like I got like the red dots, and the some of the other ones, the yellow dots, I'm still a little so like like if we identified, for instance, one of the things was colleges.

So we've got steps in and we've got schools.

So I didn't see them as little dots.

Um but but in the study, they'll have you know, between those low, medium, high, they'll have a range in there depending on where they are and how essential they are and how sensitive they are to what are correct.

Right.

Okay, so so is there a map or something that that shows all of those.

So on Stetson was included, and I want to say that you have four or five schools that were included.

Um, and that should have been on that map, actually.

Let me see.

May I bring this up to you or no?

I don't know if I'm allowed.

Okay.

I'm trying to get back to Yeah.

So this is a printed version.

Um, I took some of the things out.

Um but these are schools up here.

Um this is a school under the university.

I think it's over here.

Can we have her make copies of this?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yes, please.

What color are they?

This one too?

She'll give you a copy.

This is much.

Thank you.

And and you know, I I I wanted this to be done five years ago.

But anyway, here we are.

Um and how soon would we get like if we did an adaptation?

Say we had you do it because you already did the stormwater, so you know what's going on with that, so it'd probably be easier for you to to integrate those two things.

Um, but how soon would we get an adaptation or an implementation study done?

Would it be in time for this year's money?

So is what would happen is we could put together your grant application certainly in time.

So your grant application would start the portal opens in July and closes in September.

Oh, so it would be actually next year we'd be looking at.

Correct.

But we could certainly, I mean, we already have um we've successfully pursued adaptation plan grants for other cities.

So we could use that as a starting point to base your particular grant application.

So that it and those that portal, there's the July times, is that a state grant?

Correct.

So this would be the resilient Florida grant.

So what about like through Tampa Bay um regional planning, would they be getting the same money from the same place?

Or does do other places have other money?

So independently, so sometimes we'll see like Pinellas County is a good example of this.

So Pinellas County has lumped in vulnerability assessments and adaptation plans with several communities.

I want to say it's nine or so.

Um so you can as a larger entity be lumped or as a smaller entity be lumped in with larger entities as well.

So that is something that could happen.

Just just hoping that we could get that so that we could get it done.

How long would it take to do one?

Um to do one, I would say probably the same sort of time frame as a VA.

Um so like nine months to a year, I would say.

But you wouldn't you wouldn't get access to those funds until 2027.

So we would apply for the grant by September.

You would hopefully find out um, well, you would find out no later than March of 27 if you got funded, but they've typically been announcing in December of the same year.

So you could find out potentially that you got funding by the end of this year and then get started on your adaptation plan in 27.

So you really wouldn't be able to start doing anything until 28?

Um, no, we should be able to start the adaptation plan in 2020.

We wouldn't be able to have the adaptation and the implementation study done done until 28.

I would say that's probably realistic.

So in terms of actually starting any project or even applying for funds for a project.

We could do that now.

Well, uh technically when the grant portal opens.

So by doing the VA, the city is so your VA is complete.

Right.

So you are eligible to pursue implementation pro implementation funding for projects right now.

Okay.

So the city now those are a 50% match, so they're not a hundred percent like the planning grants.

Right, right, right.

So simultaneously, so this um this July or September, we could apply for both planning funding money for your adaptation plan and implementation funding for projects.

We could do so, like for instance, we could decide on uh because we know the stormwater projects, or we will know better about the stormwater projects in a month or so.

So we could apply for these implementation and adapt adaptation grants and say pick one of the stormwater projects and apply for them all at the same time.

Correct.

And and then it would just be built into then what our adaptation and implementation study would look like if we got the money and had the match for that.

Or they could even be independent.

I mean, I would think that they would be correlated naturally, but they wouldn't necessarily have to correlate.

But but if we got a grant, I mean say say we say we got one of these uh grants where the project some of them were like around five million dollars.

So say we got a grant to pay do half of that, and we miraculously came up with two and a half million of our own.

And we did that started that project, then when they look at the adaptation, would they take into account the differences that that should make in terms of implementing you know the things from the vulnerability study?

So you would be applying you would be applying for funding.

So assuming that this sip this September we went after funding for both.

Yeah.

Um you would be applying for an implementation grant money based on your VA and your WMP.

So your adaptation plan, it could incorporate those same areas, or by the time we start it to your point to where they're they're they're gonna be lagging a little bit just due to the funding cycle, and when you actually get the funds, we may decide that we want to focus on another area.

But can you change if you've applied, say say we've applied for doing I don't know, what whatever it was, what one of project five, whatever that is, and and then when we do the implementation, we've got the money, and we say, oh shoot, probably three would be more important based on what we've learned from the vulnerability study and the adaptation and the implementation of that.

Would whoever give it gave us the grant let us switch from project five to project three?

So that would be an FTEP sort of dependent question, sometimes depending on where you are in the grant cycle.

If you've already started the project, I would say it would probably be very difficult.

But if you had come to that realization before the project started, especially if you were still in the engineering kind of or whatever.

Well, if you're planning, it would probably be too late.

So, like if you were already doing design, now you could pursue additional funding for project three.

Or um if you were still, because there's this agreement that has to take place between the city and FDEP when you work out your grant work plan.

So this is how we're gonna spend the money that you're providing us with.

During that process, before there's actually an agreement executed between the city and FDEP, there is sometimes some wiggle room.

So if you were to come up with this realization during then, it could be possible to pivot.

After that point, I would say it would probably be difficult to pivot, but that doesn't mean we couldn't pursue additional implementation funds.

So I would like to suggest that because we are talking about details now that we are not really faced with until probably two to three years from now that we give council member Shaw to ask a question if she has any.

No, I want to move along.

I want to finish asking questions.

So if we if so if we do this, if you're doing the implementation study and you did the stormwater study, you would be probably able to tell us which project would be most likely to help with the other stuff so that we would know what to ask for money for.

Yes, I would say between the WMP and the VA, um, I would think we could prioritize.

Yeah, you know, and um one thing about um resiliency planning, it's it's a it's a full contact sport, okay.

Um you are talking, you know, the adaptation plan, one of the big things is that it gets public buy-in for what you are proposing.

You know, we talked about codes, we talked about projects and how those work together, and who do they affect constituents and taxpayers' businesses and all those kind of people.

So the adaptation plan pretty much is is a is more or less that lifeline from DEP that gives you a resource to reach out to your community and say, okay, here's the map, here's the strategies, what do we do?

It in a big picture standpoint.

So anything that we proposed in the WMP is not gonna be invalidated through the adaptation plan because really the WMP and the VA are the sources that we use to do the adaptation plan.

Right.

The adaptation plan, the the goal of it is to really say, hey, we've looked at our options, we've talked to the public, and we want to, and and I'm just gonna throw it, but we want to start using fill in this area, okay?

And we've talked to the public and we've gotten their buy-in.

And they know that this would be a code change that would be triggered when this happened.

You know, and and so that's really the adaptation.

It it it gets the public involved, and it's and and it allows the community to say, we're dealt with this situation, we're gonna focus on X.

Not necessarily increase that pipe size from a 36 to a 48, if that helps.

Thank you.

Yeah, that's it.

Do you have anything, Councilmember Shaw?

My questions were just answered.

Great.

All right, thank you so much for your presentation and details.

All righty.

So moving along, uh, it is now time for public comment before we um start public comment.

And of course, I want to hear from everyone who'd like to speak.

I have a couple words that I'd like to say.

I definitely feel the need to address some of the divisible divisiveness that is trying to tear our city down.

It is important to note that the city and the residents are not one in the same.

This council is not responsible for the bad behavior of past generations.

What a city can, a city and a council can do uh with past wrongs is to fix them.

I feel that that is exactly what this city did in 2005 when the existing city manager, a previous city attorney, and the city council of the time wrote the city's human rights ordinance.

Now I'm going to read it to you.

This was written 20 years ago, 2005.

And this is what our ordinance that stands today says.

It is important for the city to ensure that all persons within the city have equal access to employment, housing, public accommodations, and education.

It is the city's intent to work cooperatively to the maximum maximum extent possible with other city entities that may provide similar protections and to avoid unnecessary duplicate duplication of services.

It is the desire of the city council to foster and encourage the growth and development of a city in a manner that will ensure that all persons of excuse me, I lost my in a manner that will assure all persons an equal opportunity to live free of discrimination imposed by age, race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, disability, marital status, gender, gender identity, or expression, sexual orientation or physical characteristic.

Discriminatory practices are contrary to the public policy of the city and are a menace to the public peace and welfare of our citizens.

The city shall direct its efforts and resources towards eliminating discriminatory practices within the city in the areas of employment, housing, public accommodations, and education where they exist.

Again, this was written 20 years ago by the city council.

If anyone, and this now this is me speaking, if anyone feels that this ordinance is currently not in effect or is being violated, I want to hear from you.

And I mean that.us.

So I'm not going to sit up here and try and do battle with things that happened, whether it's 60, 70, 20, 5, 40 years ago.

I'm saying if there's a problem today, send me your email ASAP.

Thank you very much.

And now to public comment.

Show of hands, please.

Dean.

Good evening.

My name is Dean Hay.

I'm a resident of Gulfport, and I'm a member of a new group that's called the Gulfport Environmental Team.

We have about almost 12 members in our group, and we finalized our group name logo and slogan on Sunday after getting support from this group last year to focus on initially trees and how a volunteer group could support the ongoing efforts of the city in order to kind of uh enhance the natural balance of our city.

We're currently working on the uh the website as well, but I wanted to bring to your attention that on Saturday uh January 17th at 9 a.m.

Uh, the location is still TBD.

Neighborhood center.

Um we will be hosting our first ever uh uh volunteer uh tree inventory uh training and um and we'll be doing a walk uh around the neighborhood center in order to start uh inventorying those trees.

Uh we've chosen tree inventory as our first project because from that data as we move across the city, we'll be able to understand what our uh vulnerabilities are as well as to identify where there are our high priority projects that we can do uh tree planting as well as uh gain more uh support from the community, more buy-in.

And the way that we're doing that initially is through our uh Instagram and our Facebook accounts.

I thank you, and I'll uh put these on on the back table there in case anyone wants to sign up.

The name one more time.

The name of the group is the Gulf Port Environmental Team.

Wonderful, thank you.

It's it's GET as a is what our acronym is Get Trees, get trees, get nature.

I thank you.

Thank you.

Who else for public comment?

I'm not seeing anybody.

Oh, yes, Laura.

Laura Oldaney, Ninth Avenue South.

I don't think this falls right within the scope of their work, but I think if we could as a community take advantage of their knowledge, I think to bring the interested community members together for a conversation based on, and we didn't see the 2040, we leapt to 2100.

But I think for us as a community to come to um, you know, to come together and look at the reality of what the 2040 map projections look like with them, with maybe someone from the Tampa Bay Estuary program who's looking at sea level rise, someone with the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council.

But I think we need to start reckoning with this.

I think we need to start looking at what can we realistically expect in terms of continuing to renovate the casino and the recreation center down there?

What should we be thinking timeline-wise for moving those away from the coastline and and more inland and just for the residents that live down there to have this opportunity to to again reckon with and come to grips with you know the reality?

I mean, we can lift and we can elevate, but we're limited by money and we're limited by the realities of nature.

So just how do we take advantage of what they're willing to share with us as a community and really let it sink in and learn from it?

That's one thought, and then the other is just I was really struck when at another meeting last year late last year, Mr.

O'Reilly mentioned that the water in I can't remember what the term for it is behind Boca Sega High.

There's like stormwater catchment area there, funnels down to that pond in Tomlinson Park, which begins this major propulsion of water downward.

So I don't know if there's anything that can be done more working with Boca Siega, Pinellas County schools, like holding that water further up there, because right now it's all funneling down, it sounds from what I understood down to Tomlinson Park, that pond.

But can we work more you know with them?

Can they hold more of it up there?

You know, just a thought.

Thank you.

Anyone else for public comment?

Yes, Bob.

I enjoyed everything they said.

I'm glad they finally mentioned the punk thing.

Okay, but the beat old dead horse.

When I heard the gentleman talking, I'm hoping one of you is gonna ask on allowed the asking questions.

But if when I was listening to when we can get the grants and when we can get started, that's after next year's or after this year's hurricane season.

So we have to go through another hurricane season.

We made out great too.

We made out okay this year.

Dynamite, great.

But back to the pump things.

Okay, is there something temporary we can do like the installation of rental pumps in case?

And when the job does get done, because I know everything's moved from the northeast to the southwest.

And what was said was we'll we'll try to move that water, which just sounds great.

If we can get that to stop that from going down to the big hole down there, that would that would be we gotta, but he's like he's he said we gotta see how that works.

Well, if everybody down there getting flooded out and go, well, it didn't work.

Well, now it's time to no.

Can we have some kind of something?

Like I said, temporary pumps or something, like if it gets to a certain level and go, okay, it's not stopping.

Now everybody's gonna go underwater.

Have something to pump that water out.

If it doesn't work, I'm hoping it does.

I'm hoping the water moves the way it's supposed to, but it's always to have a little safeguard.

That's all I gotta say.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um City Clerk, do we have any e-commerce comments?

Uh none that left their name.

Okay, thank you.

Seeing no other requests for public comments, then we're gonna close public comment and we will move on.

Oh, my computer froze.

Mayor, would there be a chance that while advanced engineering is here that they respond to what uh Canny just said I I think that a better response would come a couple uh a year or so down the road after we've got some other stormwater things going on.

Well, he was asking if there was any kind of temporary measure that could be made while we were working on these things.

I think that we should move on at this point.

Okay.

Um we will we've gone from public comment and now we're gonna go to the city manager report.

Thank you.

Mayor, if I could address Ms.

Aldaney's comment about the pond at Bogasiega High School.

Yes, please.

They changed their water retention plan when they remodeled the high school.

That pond was built in the early 1960s, late 1950s.

That comes down to Tomlson.

They have now addressed that with now holding more water.

They when they purchased the Little League property.

If you look at on 58th Street, they created a dry area to hold water.

They when they built rebuilt the high school, they had to remodel their drainage where they held it more of it on their property.

So they have addressed it.

The original pond did connect to the Little League ponds.

The pond that I think she's referencing is a much smaller one close to the mobile home park.

No, it's the pond on 50 on 11th Avenue and 55th Street.

Okay.

That was the initial when they first built the high school, that was the first retention area.

Subsequently, they've remodeled the whole campus, purchasing the Little League Southeast Regional Little League headquarters for parking and drainage.

Okay.

Dry area, if you look at the area directly on 58th Street, on I want to say about 8th Avenue, Little League Boulevard, that is part of their new drainage system.

They have reconfigured their drainage.

Previously, the property drained into that pond on 11th Avenue and just straight back to the connector to Bear Creek.

It was a wet area in this the north side of the school.

And that is the pond I'm referring to.

I call it because it's on the back side of the mobile home.

So that is exactly the pond I was referencing.

Yeah, that one connects that in the back there is was tied into Bear Creek and flowed that way.

The one next to the mobile home park where we talked about the drainage ditch and all that.

So I just wanted to address that.

They have addressed a lot of the impacts that they are sending us.

Okay.

Before we move on to uh stop uh staff and council comments, it's the first of the year, so just one smidgen of um housekeeping here.

Um I wanted to acknowledge that as the year went on last year, we got a little bit further away from some of um the policies and procedures that we have created for ourselves.

So I wanted to refresh the two that I most realize that we are breaking, and we created them.

So after any staff report, we can in speaking order clarify uh ask clarifying questions.

It is not the time to ask the staff to report on other questions that they might have.

During council comments and reports, the council member has 10 minutes to respond to public comments, ask staff questions, or report on meetings that they had attended.

Um they can decide on how to spend their time.

It is okay for other council members to ask clarifying questions of each other as well.

Um, if we as council members ask a question, we must give the person a chance to respond.

So these are things that we settled on April 1, and I think we've done a pretty good job, but I notice we've been getting a little further and further away from it.

And so I just wanted to refresh everybody, that's where we're at.

And now I'm sorry, City Manager.

Okay, yes, ma'am.

Mayor, uh, two things I'd like first of all to recognize Chief Farron, and she has some comments in regards to the success of Operation Santa.

I know you'd reference it earlier.

Oh, yeah.

If G Farron came up and tell you the success story that we have.

So our Operation Santa program this year serviced will help 352 children from 152 families.

And is now a good time to mention the Francine Witten is the driving force behind that.

Without her, I'm not sure that it would be as successful as it is.

So I don't know how to recommend her for Spirit of Gulfport.

I recommend Francine Whitten for Spirit of Gulfport Award.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Great update.

If we could have a consensus to go ahead and move forward with that.

Absolutely.

She's done a year.

Scheduled that.

Yes.

Super.

Thank you, Chief.

Thank you.

Thanks, Chief.

The next item.

Once again, I and I'd like to bring up Mr.

Nichols in regards to a grant we've been receiving notice information that we've received that we are successful applicants for the Safe Streets Program grant.

And I was going to have him talk about it during his interlocal agreement, but these are two separate projects.

So Tom, you want to give some background on the Sure.

The background in uh 2023, Ford Pinellas approached the City of St.

Petersburg and the City of Gulfport to see if we wanted to partner on a grant that they had received to look at safety and safety improvements for the 49th Street Corridor from First Avenue North to 22nd Avenue South.

The agreement included study management and coordination, a community engagement plan, traffic data collection, community walking audits.

We walked 49th Street at during the day, we walked it at night, and then come up with project recommendations.

Uh decided to move forward with a federal demonstration project application.

The City of Gulfport was the lead applicant on it.

And I'm uh happy to say right now that uh December 23rd, due to the efforts of the City of Gulfport, St.

Petersburg for Pinellus, and support of Congresswoman Luna and our lobbyist Thorn Rum Partners, the City was notified that we were awarded an $800,000 federal grant.

We will be moving forward with that.

I'll be bringing in a grant agreement.

Neither myself or Cendress will be bringing a grant agreement to City Council as soon as we have one received.

They said we should have it in a few weeks.

Can I ask you a quick question?

I was driving through town shores and I was seeing that they were digging up along the sidewalk.

Is that part of that the new water lines?

No.

Okay.

Did anyone else have a question in speaking order?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Marlene?

No.

No.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank Kendricks and his staff and also our lobbyist.

You know, getting through the federal aspect of it.

We got this unique letter.

And you know, when we hear about all politics as local and things like that, that the delay in notifying us was tied to the shutdown.

And now they're trying to get to, you know, get all this information out there.

So as things are happening, as the gentleman spoke of, these processes are all tied as the federal government releases money or even processes it.

And that's part of the when we were working on the senior center plans.

You know, they that was during the not to get into the politics of it, the doge atmosphere.

So they were taking people out of the equation, and staffing was slowing a lot of things that are coming to you, take time because of what's happening at the national level.

So I just wanted to share that with you.

Um I have three other things real quick, Mayor.

Uh we received notification from our CR rating.

I want to compliment the efforts of Mike Taylor and uh Mark Griffith in regards in regards to our elevation certification program with the our getting elevation certificates and the processes we use.

We received a score of 100, which impacts your NFIP compliance.

So we did receive that.

We received notification to that effect.

So I wanted to compliment them on that.

Now that's not about elevation, it's the certificate that you have to provide when you do work basically in the flood zone.

Vice Mayor knows well about an elevation certificate.

So I just wanted to compliment that.

And one other exciting news.

Um Mr.

Griffith has passed the floodplain management program.

He is a certified floodplain manager.

So that will also help us as we move forward, hopefully, not through this again, but um I wanted to compliment him on that activity.

Also, so the one that exact that I think brought some people out this evening.

I just wanted city attorney and I wanted to compliment comment on.

You had recently received a correspondence from the City of St.

Petersburg in regards to a resolution that the City Council in St.

Petersburg passed asking you to de-annex the property known to the city of and to the residents as Lincoln Cemetery.

Subsequent to that, we scheduled, we requested a meeting with Reverend Clarence Williams of the Cross and Anvil, who is the actual owner of record of the property.

We had that meeting last Tuesday, and at that meeting, it was a city attorney and myself, Reverend Williams, another representative, another Mr.

Williams, representative Lincoln Cemetery, and also Pinellas County Commissioner Renee Flowers.

We put forth the resolution to Reverend Williams.

He had not seen it.

And he was directly myself in the city attorney.

We directly asked him if it was his intention or was he considering, or would he like to de-annex from the city of Gulfport?

His response was he had not decided what to do and did not know what he was doing.

He he had not requested that.

Because of their resolution, our tact would be to sit in a room, uh defer to the city attorney about the things we did offer.

And we explained the process.

He has not made any decision.

He did not request us to begin the process.

It was interesting because he was surprised that this issue had come up at a council meeting in Gulfport since he had made no request.

He reiterated what the mayor has said in the past as to their conversation, and he made it very clear that he's never asked the city to de-annex.

He hasn't made that decision.

He's looking at all his options.

Commissioner Flowers, it was great having her there because she was able to bring in this potential meeting that we can have with the county.

We discussed briefly on the on how to de-annex, and frankly, the city manager was very clear and point blank, said, Do you want us to you know work on de-annexing of what you need to do?

And he said, I haven't made that decision.

And he was surprised that it came before this council because that's not what he has decided to do.

So it was very interesting, it was helpful.

Uh he made it, you know, something that we've said before to council, is that he said, I've never had a problem talking with the city of Gulfport.

Every time I've asked to meet, I've been able to meet with the city, and it's never been an issue for him.

Um so he was somewhat surprised about what City of St.

Pete has already done.

Um that wasn't under his direction.

Uh so he was very clear about that.

It was a good meeting.

It lasted about an hour.

Uh we also said we're here to bring forth anything you you were requesting, please tell us.

We'll bring it to council if there's something that you're asking the city to do for them to consider.

And that's how we left it.

So interesting, it sounds very similar to our my conversation with him months and months earlier, where he said, Mayor Love, I haven't asked you for anything, and I said, and I assume if you need something, you'll let me know.

And he said yes, and I said, I'll wait on your call.

Now it's months later, and he's kind of saying the same thing.

He reiterated that conversation he had with you, and that he has not asked the city for anything.

Okay.

Anyone in speaking order questions?

No.

No.

Thank you for having the meeting.

Thank you.

No.

No.

No.

Okay.

Thank you for that report.

Was that the end of your report?

Yes, it was.

Thank you.

Thank you.

City attorney, did you have anything?

Nothing more, Mayor.

Okay.

City clerk.

Nothing this evening, Mayor.

All righty.

Then I believe that we will move on to council comments and reports, and we'll go in speaking order for that.

Yep.

Uh I don't have a report today, but um next meeting I will, because I'm going to the C M P C the Pinellas County Mayor's PCMC.

P C M C M C P C M C P C tomorrow.

Yeah.

That's off writing.

Um thank you.

So our third the fusion 49th's third event is on Saturday.

It is a foodie truck.

I was gonna say war, but I don't think there's a gift this time.

There's a food, there's a foodie fast 12 to 6 on Saturday, our third event.

Thank you for everyone who's always attended.

Um it's getting bigger and bigger, and it's it's quite a great economic um of money for everyone.

So that's great.

And Pink Flamingo Tour, that's a um visit Gulfport, Girl Gulfport Merchants Chamber, but we are Ward 4, so we have our houses, we have our gardens because ward 4 is the garden district, or it was.

We're looking for some history on that.

I will be asking that question.

Um, city manager.

So we have um just gardens, we have just homes, we have a myriad of things, and we have points of interest.

If you're looking to volunteer or would like to volunteer, because we do ask that the homeowners and the garden owners have their own volunteers, they would probably feel more comfortable, but sometimes they they don't, and there's an awful lot of people coming through.

We expect 600 to 700 people.

So if you're looking to volunteer, you can go on the website.

I'm sorry, City Clerk.

What is our volunteer um link?

Which is my golf court.

Is that connected to me?

Pardon me?

It's it isn't it connect Gulfport.

Gulfport Connect.

You can go right on there, we have it up um if you'd like to um volunteer.

So thank you.

And what was the date on the Flamingo Tour?

March 7th.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

That's it.

Okay.

Okay.

Um so the first thing um we're gonna uh hopefully have the League of Um League of Women is gonna do a um candidate forum for us.

So I'd like to um ask that we waive the fees for the Hickman Center for them to be able to have this um candidate forum.

If there's a consensus for that for the candidates for the election, yeah, okay.

That's what you have done in the case.

Yeah, yeah, yes.

All right, so that's one thing.

And do we have a date on that?

The 29th.

29th, yeah.

Of what month?

January.

Thank you.

Because valids drop vote, you know, uh, vote by mail ballots drop the beginning of February.

And I'd like to, I mean, Dean mentioned our um first tree meeting, and so I'd like I have to we in order to do that.

I'd like to ask for a town hall that day so that I can provide the venue for that.

So that would be on the 17th at 9 for the neighborhood center.

So I need a consensus for that.

Yep.

Yes.

Yes, yeah.

Do we know that it's available?

Yeah, I already checked up.

Okay.

Um so I know we were asking the city attorney about the light ordinance and hurricane straps, whether we could make those permeable driveways, the 25% permeable.

Do we know where we are on those things?

The lighting ordinance has been drafted, it's been revised, it needs one more revision, then should come before you, and then the other ones will be coming right right after that.

Okay, okay.

Just one make sure that they weren't um lost.

Um another thing that has come up.

Again, I don't know how people feel about this, but we we had no permit fees up to a certain point for people to rebuild after the storm.

And now there's still people who takes much longer if you're gonna either raise your house or demolish it and rebuild new.

That would we want to consider not charging fees for those things if it's the homeowner themselves that's doing it.

It's different if they've sold their property to somebody new because then they knew that when they took on that property.

But if it's the homeowner themselves, it just took extra time to get it together.

And I know that we're using another company to do our our portal stuff, but we certainly could tell them that these few we're gonna do in-house and not so that we don't have to pay them to do them, because we could do them like we do the homeowner ones.

So I just didn't didn't know how you'd feel because those would be reasonably high ticket permits because they're they probably already demolished or or maybe haven't, but you know, they'd have to pay or have paid for demolition, plus you know, the permit fees are are a percentage of the value of the the project.

So I wanted to see how people feel because some of them feel left out because it took them time to get the fundraising and make their decisions, blah blah blah.

So I just wanted to see how people feel about that.

I don't want to go in speaking order.

Mayor, could I comment on that?

Yes, you can.

Please, thank you.

The issue is that you do have a contractor and the contract, we would have to talk to them about how if they're basic, you're paying them 80 percent of that cost.

They're basically rec that's how their re their business model is.

So someone's gonna pay them or something if we're gonna have them process this.

No, they wouldn't process it.

We would.

Okay.

Well, under I would have to confer with them before we I can bring that back to council, because I have to confer with them that we're gonna take these out of the equation.

It may have an impact on their revenue in their business model.

Okay.

But we can if we don't have a consensus, it doesn't matter.

I just wanted to put that on the record.

Yeah, fair enough.

Their model is based on the anticipation of generating X amount of revenue.

Right.

They knew up front that they weren't gonna do the owner uh owner builder permits.

They didn't know about this large scale, because it is a revenue.

Yeah, and and there probably wouldn't be that many of them.

I don't I don't know how many people are actually totally planning to rebuild new.

And my concern would be if where would be the cutoff?

If it's like total new construction, would it be someone who just hasn't got to it yet?

Not somebody who hasn't got to it.

I think, but again, we could discuss it.

Yeah, I mean, I just have concerns about, I mean, you've had you know, so but that just we'll do what you'd like, but I just understand I have to talk to them to see the impact.

What is the impact to us?

To you, the impact to you is you would not be paying the their you would collect the revenue they collect 80%, the contractor collects 80 percent of that fee.

If you're gonna take that out of the equation or are you gonna pay it, you're gonna absorb it somehow or another.

But and that's the question.

Okay.

I mean, we're talking about being 18 months into this.

And what are the financial I mean well, I'd have to it depends on what the value of the permit is, the vice mayor spoke of it.

Do we have an average or any kind of inkling?

I just don't know what kind of money we're talking about.

Sounds like it's like on a case-by-case basis thing, and I don't know if that's a good idea of the city staff's time to really have to do that for a case-by-case basis of waiving permit fees and understanding what those risks are.

So Nancy, no, I I was hoping to get more information on the financial.

I just don't know what it what the impact costs.

Yeah.

I I actually have had some residents talk to me about this, that they're finally just figuring out how to rebuild and how to finance, et cetera.

And so I I my heart does go out to them because you know, uh I know some people even left because they were so traumatized, they just left Gulfport, moved out of state, et cetera.

So I I understand the trauma and and the complications involved with all of that.

I don't know how many this would be, and I don't know if if we have an exclusive contract that would disallow this.

So I I think it's something worth looking into and and finding out more about in order to help those particular homeowners.

I I can't I you know, knowing that we have a whole street with only one or two homes and on Del Rio that are occupied, or the second one's close to occupying.

Um it makes me think that there might be more than I'm I'm thinking, but it it tends I tend to think that we're not gonna have necessarily that many rebuilds, and and that's what I'm thinking is only the rebuilds that homeowners are doing, not that they're going to turn around and sell it or that they sold it to someone else.

City manager, I think my brain went the wrong way for a minute there.

When you were talking about the contractors, they build that into their their pricing in 80 percent.

I'm thinking the home builder contract.

You're talking about the permitting contractor.

When you outsourced it, they collect they receive 80 percent of the permit fees.

Okay.

To provide you all the services.

So we would be taking money out of their pocket on ones that were using contractors, and when it's talking about brand new construction, good chance at least 95 to 99 percent are going to do that.

Right.

So on the other hand, I can see what you're saying that um the folks that maybe jumped through all the hoops and tried to get their SD letters down below 50 percent and spent a couple months doing that, and during that time other people were successful and got um a break on their permit fees, and now these folks couldn't do that, so they're forced to demolish and then um build.

They're not getting any kind of break, and it wasn't they're in the same boat.

Um and I think that um being that we do have a lot of streets that still have nobody on, I think that there's a long list of people trying to talk to the same contractors.

I'm wondering if um, you know, if we could at least do something and just say just with the demolition permits, or you know, if we could assist, give them some break that the other people did get if they were able to get it under 50 percent.

So I I guess I would kind of like to talk to you, you know, get let me wrap my head around it and talk uh about it.

Um another again.

And and I assume that they've probably contacted by now everybody who got an SD letter.

Oh, they're all out.

Oh, so I'm saying is the permitting department may have a good idea how many people are now actually planning to demolish and rebuild.

Well, I guess the question is if I could add uh the question is where what's your cutoff?

Is it a total rebuild?

That's one question.

Are you gonna waive permit fees for someone who just has started to do the work?

I think that that's a really good question.

So that makes me want to back up a little bit.

Sure.

If they just flat it have not responded to us at all, um I'm I would not be interested in waiving the permit fees.

If on the other hand they're just getting to the point now that they can demolish because that it was all the time that was involved.

So we've been talking to them for a year and a half and now they're ready to go.

That's a different person to me than the person who has not responded to our letters, has not talked to us uh whatsoever, who has not lifted a finger to do anything.

That's two I agree.

Yeah, so let's let's ponder that one and come and revisit that.

Okay.

Um and that's my concern is someone who hadn't is not even demand it's because the next step is new construction is one thing.

If they're gonna replace and they're gonna scrape the land and rebuild something, that's one thing.

But someone who now says, well, you're giving him a free permit, and all I want to do is fix my doors from the understanding because that's the arguments we get every day.

Yeah.

No, I think it would come clear.

Could become it could come back, Jim, to when we cut off, which I want to say was June 1.

When we cut off on June 1, if we had not heard from them by June 1 at all, no response, then I don't think that they can ask for a break now.

But if they were already working on it and communicating, but maybe they had to go through with a couple of contractors who let them down.

I think that could be a different scenario.

No, and I agree with you.

That's the my big concern is just what's the cut, what's the limit if it's new.

June one.

No, no, no.

What I'm saying, what is the limit?

If it's strictly they have a demolition, the first criteria would be they have to have a demolition permit.

Then we can then we'll look into what the impact is.

But we're not I my recommendation would be to tell you that the first step would be to have they secured a demolition permit.

Because I don't want to turn this into two weeks from now, someone says, Well, you gave the the guy that's building the big fancy house a permit waiver.

Why can't you waive mine?

And and you're creating two classes of citizen again.

And we we caution all the time about that.

So let's we can get a list of demolition permits and see who's contacted us.

Right.

I think before we go anywhere, let me get a demolism.

Yeah, and some of them may have already demolished and just haven't revealed yet.

But either way, yeah.

But I was just going to point that out.

Yeah, I mean, if they've got a vacant lot, that's one discussion.

Right.

But or they've asked they should have a demolition permit.

Exactly.

Now the other aspect of it, you're going to have a demolition permit for a couple of properties that are going to be very expensive.

You've got two properties that are have demolition permits.

Interesting.

That are going to be very substantial.

Because you're going to have the seaside villas demolition.

And you're going to have the property on 31st Avenue demolition.

They they made application for the demolition park.

The cottages.

Oh, right, right, right.

They've made application.

So these are expensive projects that are.

Yeah, but they didn't own that property in June.

So they bought it under those conditions.

Lots to consider.

That's what that's a financial impact.

That's why that's a sizable permit fee.

That's a very sizable permit.

Well, and I don't know whether we'd want to consider it for people who were homesteaded, for instance.

Well, now you're starting to see the case.

That's a difference from a commercial and a homeowner.

But our inspection contract doesn't differentiate.

I understand.

The idea that it has to be a homesteaded property with a demolition permit and the intent to rebuild and stay and sign an affidavit, Andy, that they plan on not selling it for one year or something.

Yep.

I don't mean to expand on it, and I'm I just want to make sure that we don't create loopholes that we're waving something for someone to take advantage when other people didn't get to take advantage of it.

But that sounds like a good criteria.

Well, I mean we'll come up with some criteria, but let us look at the demo permits and then was the house homesteaded, has it changed hands?

Those are all things that we'll have to look into.

I I don't know if I have any minutes left because people used a lot of my minutes.

Can I bring up one more thing?

Yeah, I think so.

I don't think she had 10 minutes.

Do you?

Yeah, the bowl.

The buzzer went off, but but that's because everybody was discussing.

Okay.

Can you wrap it up?

Yep.

But yeah.

So my other thing is about the sundown thing and an apology.

And I totally appreciate what you read, and I believe that we currently are following that, maybe with some rare exceptions or people who think that they were discriminated against, even if they weren't.

But um that that's different still from making a general apology for something that happened in the past.

And again, personally, I would say that it doesn't harm us to do that, and people would appreciate it.

But again, you know, it has to be a consensus if people want to do that.

You know, I think the the human rights ordinance is fabulous, and we did a great job with that, and people generally feel that they're welcomed here now, but that doesn't preclude what happened before and acknowledging something that happened.

So it it's again whether there's a um consensus to do something.

And again, we could discuss what it is exactly.

But so I'd like to hear what you think.

Um are we asking for like a public apology?

Yes.

Just from us on city council on behalf of the city on behalf of the city from before that that we're for instance, we're sorry that people felt that they weren't welcome here and or that they weren't welcome here, and that now we've changed that and we have a human rights ordinance and people are welcome.

So do we just make a statement?

Yeah.

Okay.

I think it's fine.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I know how I live my life.

I know how I treat people.

I'm not sure if apologizing for people that were here many, many years before me.

It's helpful, actually.

I want to be helpful.

I don't know that it's helpful.

Okay.

Uh I I've heard from enough people to feel that that there could be a healing.

Uh to uh recognize that um institutions and laws and society once upheld and behaviors once upheld, um were um denying basic dignity and opportunities to millions.

Um if we're recognizing that that history is essential to understanding the present and moving forward from there and declaring that people all people are welcome in our community and our um and we celebrate diversity, etc.

As per the HRO, um I I wouldn't be opposed to that because it does seem to come up from time to time, and and it is still on people's minds.

And and I would not I would feel proud to make sure that we're very clear on where we are today, and that we never want anything like that to happen.

Excuse me?

I said I think that's what our ordinance does as I said the way that a city fixes their wrongs is to fix their wrongs and that's what I think our ordinance does.

And and I'm glad that you read that I I felt that that was very strong and and that was very appropri appropriate to read it I was actually going to ask if we could so without talking to you I was really really happy that you did um I I'm just stating my thoughts on that and um what whatever the majority I defer.

So so maybe should we ask Andy if you could write up something that would be a statement for us.

That's what you're directing me to do yes.

Okay.

Because we had four of us that said yes.

I think actually three need clarification are you drafting is yes the city attorney to to draft something as council member show spoke of like yeah or specifically apologize.

No I think something that like Marlene said would be fine.

So so it's acknowledging that this happened in the past and we don't want to duplicate that in the future no that's not what she said.

She said people are welcome here and we acknowledge that no I would want to acknowledge that we that that things were not always welcoming in the past but now we are I don't know about that do we want to think about it some more so I think yeah I'm not getting direction I actually did use the word regret.

Yeah um and and learning from history and that we're we stand strong against that ever being rehe repeated here and and I and I understand that that that a lot of that language is all or all of that language is basically in the human rights ordinance from 20 years ago which I was thrilled that we adopted then but it it seems like because this keeps coming up that we might just need to take it I feel like we're bringing it up well there's other people bring it up I like that I I like that you said I feel like we're bringing it up because I do not think that this would have been brought up in 2025 or 2026 except for all the negative press about the Lincoln cemetery which is all BS.

Well yeah we know that it has come up before it has come up before I'm not disagreeing that it hasn't come up I'm saying that this has been going this has been dragging on and leaving more room for dialogue since the Lincoln Cemetery got brought up in one September well it's been coming up for years too off and on so it yes it's been more active but when you say that it's been brought up here's another point I was saying there's a difference between the city and Dave Mathers stood up here at our last meeting and said and and documented several things that said there's no proof that the city of Gulport and when I say the city I mean the council that they ever codified it and agreed to it okay I agree he he made that statement so what I'm saying is the city never codified it never found any of that behavior acceptable the city council cannot govern individual people's behavior we don't act like that it would never be acceptable for us to act like that but we don't control that behavior as a city council if they were breaking a law maybe the police department but the city council does not do that.

So I think that we are opening a can of worms to apologize as if that was the position that this city took and I don't know that that is the case.

Well I'm not suggesting that that that it was codified just just to be clear um and I also know that there are some folks that that wouldn't necessarily be pleased without some very diplomatic phrasing in a proclamation or resolution I I see it from both sides but I again I'll I'll defer to council I you know I've stated where what what what my thoughts and concerns are and how I my desire is to just just be able to move on from this and and so I'll leave it at that.

And and I agree we didn't codify it I agree but most cities who were sundown cities didn't codify it but it still was an accustomed practice in the city so even if it wasn't an ordinance it was something that was generally known and acknowledged that you didn't come here after sundown or you had to leave by sundown.

So even if it wasn't an ordinance, it was something that was generally known and acknowledged that you didn't come here after sundown, or you had to leave by sundown.

It was a general practice.

So it wasn't codified.

Yes, the city didn't make it a law, but it was a practice.

So that's all I'm saying is to do the kind of thing that Marlene said.

I'm not sure I have I'm really not sure I have direction.

I'm not trying to do that.

Well, I know we're still working on it.

I just right.

I I don't know if you all need to think about it, give me direction as to points that you want in it.

I'm happy to draft whatever you give me direction to do.

If Marlene has something in writing that I can use as a guide, I'm happy to do it.

I'll share my thoughts and then others might share the question.

If I could draft something, you can look at it, whatever the council wants to do.

So Kosy and Nancy, how do you feel about that?

I would be interested in what that looks like.

Yes.

Okay.

I can draft something, send it to council individually, get comments back from council individually, and then hopefully have something to present to you as a whole council.

Perfect.

That would be assuming council member Shaw gives me what you're not.

You worded it well.

I I I will.

I'll share that with you, and I hope others do too, because it's it's not all about what I think, you know.

I'm just sharing some of my thoughts, and and and again, you know, uh I see both sides of this this whole conversation.

I I know in the past, you know, people even then people felt differently about it.

So, you know, I'm just trying to see if we can just tie it.

We'll put something together for you to look at.

Thank you.

Okay, that's enough trouble for tonight.

Okay.

Well, again, I'm wishing everyone a again a happy and healthy new year.

And now after weeks of festivities and celebrations on our wonderful community, we've entered the year, and as you can see, we're ready to move forward into the new year.

Um, so may our goal continue our goals continue to raise the level of public engagement as well.

Um, so thank you very much for the presentations.

Um I'm sure there's uh lots more questions, and I look forward to even getting full copies of of both the stormwater report and the vulnerability assessment uh and the slides, of course.

Um and we've already acknowledged the Operation Santa, and I just think it's amazing how individuals stepped up and how organizations and clubs and businesses all contributed.

So I I can only say that Gulfport was came came proud.

Um I I have to say congratulations to Don Fisher for being recognized as the Gulf portion of the year.

Um there were many wonderful nominees, but knowing what Don has Dawn has done and still does for the community over the decades, and very often, most often humbly behind the scenes, it is so well deserved.

So I'm I'm glad that that recognition was given to her, and I know others agree with me on that as well.

Um the rest of mine is is mainly um questions interested in finding out if we can get kind of a year-end budgetary and overall report from the departments and perhaps hear about what some of the department goals are for 2026.

So you know, we have previews of coming attractions for our residents and for ourselves.

And uh and um I was I know that you brought um uh the copy of the zoning map there and because some residents had requested that, and I'm wondering also if there's a place we could display that while we're having these discussions that are are perhaps coming up.

Um and then coming back with uh some requests.

Is there any consideration that's been given regarding surveying the tangerine neighborhoods regarding one-way streets uh due to the pedestrian and bicyclist uh safety?

Um they're still coming to me talking about that.

Uh and and I don't know if anybody's listening all my questions, but I hope when when even residents' questions are raised that we're making a note.

So if they're not answered during this meeting, they're answered at the next meeting.

Um I understand that the casino docks are expected to be completed in approximately six months.

Um, and it seems that we're being lenient about addressing the vessels that are anchored there.

But there is concern about some of them actually tying up to the seawall and what could result in damage.

And I'm I'm hoping that we all support the officers and forcing them not tying up there.

Let's see, notes.

You know me and my notes.

This year we're going to be celebrating the 250th anniversary of America, and I'm hoping that we can all come forth and collaborate on plans for that celebration.

I'm sure it's going to be special, so any any way we can all be a part of that would be exciting.

And then keeping that in mind, are we doing anything to honor Martin Luther King Day?

Besides, I know we're observing it by closing city.

No, that usually happens organically.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

All right, we'll we'll leave that for now.

Um I know for many years, you know, we had a Martin Luther Day uh Day of Service.

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

And it was um, I I felt like it was a really nice thing.

It was well attended, and there were a lot of events.

That's what we're doing.

But that did come, you know, pretty much some groups.

I mean, you know, I was involved with that, made that happen, and then brought that, you know, nice and neat, and a nice little package to the city.

So the because the city that's a that's a day off for the city.

Right.

But right.

Okay, that that would be wonderful.

Um I think the rest of it I we've already covered, except I did want to mention that yesterday was National Bird Day, and I was over I've been spending a lot of time looking around things in the marina area and in Clambyou, and we have actually had sightings of not just osprey and pelicans and some of our regular feathered uh neighbors, but eagles and kingfisher birds.

So I get excited about that sort of thing, and I hope you join me in that.

Thank you.

All righty.

So uh for me under council comments, um, I wanted just to state that there was a really really nice compliment from on social media from somebody who had visited our city for the first time, and they said what a wonderful place to be and how friendly everybody was and how helpful they were.

It was really nice, but I I forgot to uh make a copy of that.

But I also received one uh as an email that I did want to read, and it says it was um it was actually from the um director of the uh New Horizons Band, and the second paragraph said also the band board wants to uh wants you to know that everyone that we work with in Golfport is just so gracious, kind and top notch.

I don't know how know everyone's names, but at um uh but of note at the Hickman, Jacob, Rachel, and Dennis question mark at the um senior senator Rachel, John, Walter, and Kristen, and of course Justin, who's super helpful and professional.

So I wanted to share that.

Second thing I wanted to say is at the when I was tired at the end of the our last meeting, I made a mistake when I was trying to give credit to our city manager for helping our uh Coast Guard, instead of me getting the credit for that, I referred to the Coast Guard as the National Guard.

And if anyone caught it, they didn't say anything.

But when I re-listened, because I always re-listen to all the meetings, I caught myself saying that, so I wanted to say I do know the difference.

Um I I did want to bring up if you haven't seen this particular piece.

Uh this is everything that's going on at the library, and it's a wonderful piece because it's all programs that are happening weekly, so it's not like every month it changes.

It's really good.

I imagine, Dave, this are probably sitting out at the library that somebody could pick this up.

It has everything uh going on there, and there and there's a lot baby time, story time, teen space, study club, kids club, uh all right here, and uh Pixie Playtime.

So a lot of things happening at our library.

Also, when you walk into the library now, you might notice that there's a poster up and says your city taxes pay for this.

All right, way to go.

Um I also wanted to make mention of the fact that uh we currently have applied for a couple of grants.

The three that I'm most aware of right now is that we um have applied for a grant that would um uh help us with the expense of marine area test valves.

That was one of the things that the uh came up in the um stormwater study was at the marina because it has a better slope than say right downtown Gulfport.

Uh we might try out these these valves.

It's been a suggestion, and we're trying to get some funding to help us with that.

The second thing that we're looking at trying to get funding for, and we've applied for grants is what we're gonna call stormwater safety project.

Um stormwater safety project, water quality um to reduce the flooding on 53rd, and that's something that Justin kind of alluded to tonight.

We're looking at instead of maybe running all the way down 53rd.

Could we hold some of the m water that's coming from behind me and take it over to Clymer Park and let it disappear naturally over a couple of days?

So that's one thing that we're looking at getting funding for.

And then, of course, the third would be uh we don't have the three phases of our senior center yet, but you know we're working on them, so I'm just gonna refer to them additions to the senior center.

So we're trying to get some funding on those, and I wanted you to be aware of it.

And the one thing that wasn't mentioned yet, but I have to make sure everybody knows that Thursday, so today's Tuesday, two days from now, we're having a town hall right here at 6 o'clock.

And it's going to be so that we can take in resident input and listen to the residents as well as us to have our first, our very first conversation about what we're gonna do with what we are now calling the marina pro uh property.

We used to call it the Lions Club, okay.

The Lions Club no more, so we're gonna be calling it the marina property and decide what we're going to do be doing with that.

So I hope everybody will come out for that meeting and give us their input.

So with that being said, it's 826.

And before we move on to consent, I'm going to suggest that we take a seven-minute break.

Oh, it's now 827.

So we'll take a seven-minute break and we'll uh adjourn it um again, seven minutes 34, 834.

I tell you, you remind me of my daughter every day.

That's what you've said we have to have those.

They were here for what they needed to they wanted to hear, I guess I'd say.

All right, so with that in mind, then we will go to uh wow consent agenda.

Consider approval of meeting minutes from meetings held December 2nd and December 16th, 2025.

Motion to approve.

Second.

Beat you.

All those in favor?

Yes.

Any opposed?

Passes unanimous.

We do not have any new ordinances tonight to discuss.

We do have a resolution.

Item 8A resolution, or excuse me, 9A, resolution 2026-01, a resolution authorizing the city manager to enter into an interlocal agreement with the city of St.

Petersburg for intersection improvements along the 49th Street corridor.

Motion to approve.

Second.

City manager, Mr.

Nichols, Mr.

Nichols.

As part of the uh state safe streets for all program, we identified during those walking tours.

Uh three different uh short, mid, and long range projects that we could do.

The short range projects are mainly maintenance projects that since the city of St.

Petersburg and Gulfport share 49th Street right down the middle.

Um we decided uh let's any up.

They're doing they're offering $750,000.

The City of Gulfport has budgeted $500,000 for $1.25 million to do these intersection improvements, and basically it's gonna be from First Avenue North, I believe it is, 222nd Avenue.

We're gonna clean the intersections up, improve the crosswalks, improve the ADA handicap ramps.

We're gonna do a lighting study as part of this, and just as a first step, we can get started on that right away.

The the safe streets money may take a little while.

So this would be phase one, and we can get some some really nice projects, some overdue maintenance projects, if you will, done.

Will it keep people from running into that wall at trolley market?

I'm not sure what to do about that just yet, but that is part of what we're gonna be looking at as the as the planning of the uh other project.

Very good.

I have no questions, thanks, Tom.

You're welcome.

I have no questions, but I'm thrilled.

My ward is going to be very, very happy.

Yeah.

Lots of discussions at 4949.

This is exciting.

Thank you.

It's been talked about for a bit now.

Yep.

Very good.

Thank you.

Thank you, Tom.

Uh, do we have any public comment?

Councilmember Jackson.

Yes.

Councilmember Early?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Thanos?

Yes.

Councilmember Shaw?

Yes.

Mayor Love?

Yes.

Carries to passage.

All right.

So we do have a discussion item on the agenda for tonight.

The this was at the last council meeting, Vice Mayor Thanos made a request that we use staff time to rezone all of our R2 zoning.

I think that's what you said.

R Z no, you wanted to make it all R2, excuse me.

And there it there really wasn't any discussion.

And um, and then I went to her after the fact and said, you know, I wish we could have a council discussion on that before we spend any staff time, and she was very amenable to that and said yes.

And so I asked her if she could kind of lead a discussion tonight on what it is.

I mean, she was specific in terms of saying I want to rezone, but I wasn't clear on what direction she was wanting to give to the staff or what really is the objective or the goal, what what we're trying to accomplish.

So if you would lead this conversation discussion, that would be appreciated.

Great.

So you're the only one who doesn't have a map, but if you want to move, it's up on the prescription.

Oh, you can see it.

Okay.

Um the goal of this, it's we're already have been talking about ADUs and have some consensus on that and just have to work out the final details on that.

Um to do ADUs, you don't need to do a density study.

Um but now if you look at the map, you can see a really good portion of this is already R2.

And that would allow for duplexes.

And right now there's a size of the lot, how big the lot has to be, which is fairly good size.

And like a lot of the duplexes that are in the arts district, you know, the kind that are you know side by side duplexes, if they were to burn down or something, they couldn't be rebuilt.

The lots would be too small.

So what I would want to suggest is that we make it so it's at least R2, maybe R3, because we you know the the big houses that they're building now in a two 2400 or 3,000 square foot house, you could have 3,000 square foot apartments.

Um the goal would be to have some less expensive housing and make it more affordable for the people who work here to live here.

A clarifying question, because I think I missed one point here.

You um, you know, and as we talked, it's sometimes hard to keep listening when you're when you're stuck on one point.

You said that current duplexes in what zoning could not be rebuilt of the same.

So you know a lot of the duplexes that are in the R district.

There are two, they're zoned R2, okay, which would allow duplexes, but the lots that they were built on originally are smaller than what we require for a duplex now.

So I think it's we require almost 10,000 square feet for a duplex.

It depends on the zoning district on how many square foot per unit.

But a lot of times they're on smaller lots.

So they couldn't be rebuilt.

They're non-conforming at this point.

Yeah.

And um so you know, and we have lots of duplexes scattered all over the place.

Um and again, the the purpose of this is to increase affordable housing.

And you know, I looked at I and I've talked to several people now about form-based codes and stuff like that.

So the process isn't, I don't think actually that would work for what we want to do.

I'm not sure.

And but my understanding is to go from R1 to R2 is relatively easy.

To go to R3, so I'm clear, according to who?

According to Ford Pinellas.

I've talked to them.

Forward Panellus?

Yeah, okay.

Thank you.

I've talked to them.

And um, because I don't think you have to do a density study to do that.

But if you're gonna change when I talked to the I was also talking to the um the housing, what are they Florida Housing Coalition, whatever.

Anyway, it was shocking to them too.

And they were saying that to just go to R2 isn't too complicated.

But if you're going to change the size lot that you can allow duplexes to be built on, that is more complicated.

Right.

And my my idea would be that you could build a duplex or potentially a triplex if we decide on any lot, as long as it met the setbacks and the height and everything else as a regular single family house.

So because that would change the required lot size, that could be more complicated.

But the whole goal of this, and a lot of people are doing this.

This isn't like just out of my brain.

That this is something that's going on all over the country.

Um, but the goal of it is to make more affordable housing, to go from having just single family housing to more duplexes and stuff, so you get there'll still be market value, but but they'd be because they're smaller, they'll be less expensive.

Says who like how how do you how do you come up with that?

Huh?

How do you know that?

So if I build a new duplex in my backyard, how how is it affordable?

Okay, so if well, you're gonna have to go by market.

So if if you're renting a property, if it and these wouldn't be built in your backyard, an ADU would be built in your backyard.

This a duplex wouldn't be built.

This would be if if there was a vacant lot or a house came down for some reason, it would be a you know, a new build, usually.

Okay.

Um so just because it's smaller, you know, if you're renting a whole house and you're renting, you know, depending on an old house, new house, but if you're renting a a 2500 square foot house, you're gonna pay four thousand dollars or so now.

But if you're renting a thousand square foot apartment, it's gonna be less.

Okay, so it's not it's still gonna be market, you know.

You can't make it, I mean, yeah, yeah, we could require it to be affordable, but that's a whole nother step.

Um, but if you just go with market, it's the same thing with ADUs.

It's because they're inherently smaller that they would be more affordable.

They still because they're new, might be more affordable, less affordable than an old duplex, for instance, but at least it would add some intermediate size because you know, a lot of our houses, I mean, my house is only 900 square feet.

So when they're building these big ones, you know, I can fit three of my houses in there.

And again, you know, we're we're gonna lose a lot of that bungalow size properties uh as things go on.

And again, people wouldn't have to build the duplex, they could still build a single family house if they wanted, and we don't have that many vacant lots as we all know.

And and there's not gonna, you know, people tend to fix up their houses unless you know, with the flood, this was a little different.

Okay, but um, and again, you may not want to increase it.

Well, actually, our worst flood areas are already R3.

Normally, you you want to not increase the density in flood areas, but we've already got R3 or R2 there.

So, and that's where our high rises, all of our big apartment things are all in the flood zone.

Okay, so that's something that you might not do again if you had a choice, but it's too late for that.

Anyway, so that was the purpose of thinking about doing this.

Okay, so just to reiterate back to you what you're saying.

I mean, I agree.

It's with not everything has the limit.

Let me take that back.

I I've seen many duplexes that you don't know that they're duplexes, and if you take a 25 2500 square foot dwelling and it's two twelve hundred and fifty square foot residences as opposed to one.

I say six of one half dozen of the other.

So uh so uh I understand that, okay.

Um but I uh my one of my concerns is is that it's taken a very long time since we first started talking about ADUs to get to this point that we're on the verge of taking it the next very serious step and maybe really getting action going on them.

So I don't know, and this is one of the questions on my mind, and I have concerns of what more would we accomplish by trying to change our R1s to R2, and might it set us back on something that the ADUs is a is a priority to me.

And I'm not okay, it's a priority because we've had our residents say they want it.

I've had many a people approach me and say they want that.

I've not had a resident approach me and say, hey, let's take all of our R1 and rezone it to R2.

So I'm not saying that I'm totally opposed.

I'm just saying, well, who's the driving force behind this and what are we trying to accomplish?

Is there somebody out there who's driving this who's well, you know, I've got a good size lot and I'm I'm thinking about tearing it down and building a duplex instead.

I mean, what what is behind this is kind of um is kind of what's going through my mind.

And would it what here's what I think I'm trying to say.

I think to get some more affordable housing in our city, the fastest route to do that today might be to get our ADUs up and off the ground before we worry about rezoning our our city.

I don't know.

I I definitely I the ADUs we've already discussed, we're kind of almost there.

So as soon as we have the comp plan back, we'll discuss the last few issues and then we're ready to go with those.

So definitely those are the fastest.

And people who have a house, if they can afford, like I had somebody quote me today for to build a th a 300 to 400 square foot tiny house in my yard.

So that's not converting a garage, which is cheaper, of course.

It would be up like 135,000.

So not everybody has 135,000 to put into that kind of thing.

You know, but it but it's still, you know, you you can do you could do a tiny house, you can convert a garage, you could build above a garage.

There's lots of options for ADUs.

Um and that is the fastest, easiest thing.

This would be for people who like there's a really nice one that Winway built on 28, where you look at it and you can't even tell the difference.

It looks, you know, it keeps the character and everything.

So you know, again, this would just be in addition.

Don't want to take anything away from ADUs, and nobody has approached me about this.

It's something that cities all over the country are doing to make life more affordable because there's an affordable housing crisis.

That's the only reason.

Couldn't agree with you more.

But these people that are trying to rezone their city, are they trying to um with a limited staff get their ADUs going forward at the very same time?

I mean, that's but that's that doesn't take any necessarily any staff time.

They that's just approving a permit, and we have these contractors.

If they use a contractor, it's gonna go through our contractor portal.

Okay, so just I don't know.

I could be wrong, but my common sense says that when we as a council come to the conclusion that yes, we want because we have we want to go forward with ADUs, and now we're we're getting some guidelines from Ford Pinellis, then that workload is going to shift dramatically to our somewhat limited department um to to implement and look at all the minor details as well, that is what I'm thinking.

Right, Michael Taylor's team.

Yeah, Michael, I mean, it's not like we go, okay, we want them, all right, let's make it happen tomorrow.

Well, but you put it in, I mean, okay, you revise your comp plan, and that tells you, like we've already decided that they'll have the same setback, same height, and all that kind of stuff.

So you write that into your comp plan, then it's people just making permits the way they would make any permit.

If it's a homeowner permit, then yes, our staff would have to do it.

If it's a contractor, it would go in the portal in the con our contracted permit people would do it.

So I I'm not saying it wouldn't take any extra staff time.

It would, but not uh I don't think an inordinate amount of staff time.

And especially if it's even through the whole city.

Okay, so I've kind of said some things that I think I'd like to hear from the rest of you.

Um I do agree with you, Mayor, that I don't think um this is a high priority for us to discuss right now.

Um, due to talking about ADUs and where and limited staff time as the points that she made.

On top of it, um these this rezoning is very pertinent to my ward as well as Nancy's word, and so I don't think we're out of place to discuss this.

And furthermore, if we're talking about rezoning that nobody's asked for, would anyone have the money to build?

Or would go to developers?

There's just so many questions about this that I think we're kind of jumping the gun while it's good information, and of course the affordable affordable housing is uh super relevant.

I think that there is still plenty of discussions that need to happen with our constituents.

I agree.

You said it very well.

I just um I think we waited out a little bit for the ADUs.

I think we waited out.

I think we have more of a we've had discussion, we're pretty knowledgeable.

We've had experts.

This is kind of I mean, it's interesting.

I'm listening, I'm hearing you.

Yeah.

Well, and I was going to bring it up.

Maybe too soon for the mayor suggested that that she just wanted to know the purpose of all of it.

So that's why this is just a preliminary thing.

Oh, yeah, I'm sure we could get someone right to talk more about it if we wanted to.

But yeah, and I mean, what I was just trying to do was um to see if if there was enough of a consensus among us to have our staff spend any time on it at this time.

What you know, and uh maybe we're gonna whittle down to one specific thing that you were actually trying to do in in particular, and maybe there was another way that that could be accomplished was also why I wanted to have a discussion before we set them off on a journey, not even knowing what the goal was.

Yeah, right.

I get that.

That was fine.

Okay.

Well, I uh read everything that Vice Mayor forwarded had uh city clerk send to all of us, and I've watched videos on it.

I read beyond that as well, um, so many questions.

Um, you know, starting with can certain areas of the neighborhood uh be rezoned, or does that only apply to an entire area?

Because I understood that it had to be an entire area, and then can types of middle housing be limited to certain types because when you start looking at the middle housing, um there's everything from four pluses stacks, duplex side by side stack, core courtyard buildings, cottage courts, townhouses, multiplex medium.

I could go on and on.

Um, and and some of those sound really cute and adorable, but they also start feeling very HOA-ish, condo-ish to me, which is a whole nother thing.

And and and I always have to start first and foremost.

What do those neighborhoods want?

And and in talking to just even some of them, there's they're they're not saying they want their neighborhood changed into something different than it already is.

They like that neighborhood feel, yeah.

And and so until I can hear more from from people, and and then of course, more guarantees that it truly would be affordable.

And by the way, I'm definitely right from the start, I was in favor of ADU, so still am.

Um, I it it's it's not something that I feel like we're quite ready to pursue, is where I'm coming from on this.

I think it's it's an it's it's a it's an exciting thought as I read about these types of perimeter areas um close to commercial zones and walking and you know, bicycling and uh non-car and you know, all of the resiliency and environmental aspects to it sounded very exciting, but again, what do those neighborhoods want?

I love the way you said that because I will tell you that I grew up in Milwaukee, and Milwaukee is laid out a lot of the stuff that um Vice Mayor sent to us.

That's Milwaukee.

I mean, you can have a single family home here and a duplex right here, and a quadruplex, and then the dry cleaner, all within one block, and you walk to everything.

I loved it.

That's the way Chicago's laid out, not the suburbs, but the city itself.

I absolutely love it.

And then as Vice Mayor was talking, and she said, you know, a lot of people are doing this.

Well, when I'm going to the meetings, you know, this but particularly the uh Florida League of Cities meetings, I'm hearing this too.

But here's the difference.

I'm hearing this among the cities that are growing by leaps and bounds, and they're developing now in their new cities, and they're looking at these new old ideas.

Right.

This is the way I was raised in neighborhoods like that.

So they're looking at new, and I'm like, oh man, yeah, that looks fun and exciting.

But we're in a very different situation.

We have people that are settled in and maybe possibly made a decision that they wanted to be in this zoning versus this zoning.

It's possible, especially if they were looking for a larger lot, you know, they they might have taken that in.

So I don't I know what you're trying to do, and I I know I would like to live in a city like that, but I also really like living here, you know.

And so um, I think you know, from my perspective, I think for us to keep moving and move along as quickly as we can on ADUs and see how that might change.

I mean, we're not gonna come out of this thing with you know 25 or 50 ADUs, but we're gonna come out of it with some ADUs, I do believe, and some uh accommodations, and I think that it very possible that there's people that have studios, even myself.

I mean I don't want to rent it now, but I mean it's possible that I could make that an ADU as well.

And so that we'll have some additional housing because we are missing that the not today, but we can we see the writing on the wall.

We know that we're going to have that missing middle as they talk about, but I think more than the missing middle in golfport, I think is the workforce housing.

And I see ADUs well housing.

Well, that's what you're saying, but I'm saying I think there's a difference between an ADU that might be 600 square feet and um a duplex that might offer a thousand to each.

That could be um middle, even so I think that there's a difference, and I think that some ADUs can be pulled off quicker, especially if they go up and over a garage.

Oh, absolutely, quicker and even more cost effective.

So um yeah, and I mean a lot of the missing middle things are designed for bigger, you know, they're they're designed for where you have a commercial street, and then you go to apartments, then you go to duplexes, then you go to single family, and we're not there, that's not us.

This would be spot ones where there's empty lots, and because we have so few empty lots and so little turnover, it wouldn't change the character.

But I get it, it you know, it's a new concept for everybody.

I just wanted to bring it up so that you know about it, think about it, and again, there's a couple ways you can do it.

You could just change R1 to R2 and make it like the rest of the city, or and either and or differently, you could change the R2 so that you could build as long as you built to the same setbacks, the lot size wouldn't matter.

And again, you might have to do a density study for that.

So, you know, but there's a couple ways you could accomplish it where you you're still staying in an R2 zone, but you're just changing the lot size that's required, or you're going to R1.

And most of these R1 places had no storm damage, so there's really very few lots available.

That's true.

You know, so it's not like you're gonna make any big difference to any neighborhood unless we had one of those 500-year things come through.

But um, yeah, let's hope for that.

I might be building tiny homes at my house.

Anyway, but it it's something that you know we don't have to do today.

I agree, ADUs are way more important to get that finished.

And Dunedin's experience with ADUs, and they now they did theirs a little different.

They made theirs that it had to be for pretty much a relative.

And you could either live in the ADU and rent your house to a relative or vice versa.

But they found that they had maybe 10 a year built.

And and construction costs have gone up.

So like I said, the quote I got today just over the phone was 135,000 for three to four hundred square foot cottage.

It was a cottage, not a conversion.

When I converted my garage to a bedroom and a bath, it was 40,000.

But that was five years ago.

And um it's only 200 square.

To put that 130 in perspective, if you have a mother living in a facility, right?

Yes, and it's only limited assistance, you're paying nearly five thousand dollars a month right now.

And if they have to be moved to another floor, it's 11,000 a month.

Yeah, you can pay it off in two years.

And yeah, it's a difference.

Yeah, that's a big difference, whether it's for your own personal use for your family, or you're doing it as a rental, and and whether you would get the payback, you know.

So different people will have different resources and requirements.

So anyway, I wanted people to know and think about it.

And um, so when you come up, you'll know more about it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Can we move to new business then?

All righty, we'll do that in speaking order as well.

No new business, no new business, no new business.

No new business.

Okay.

Well, I have just a couple.

And at our next council meeting, I am planning to give you, you know, um a presentation on what I saw and heard, and it will be a discussion, I guess, not a presentation, so that for anyone that else that was at those meetings that they can join in.

But I I I've been looking to see where were the thoughts similar and where were they very different?

And I'm setting the the tone here as I do that because then at the February meeting, I am hoping to then come back and uh do a presentation on some traffic flow and additional parking, I believe that we could create very quickly and uh talk about traffic flow and kind of setting the tone first with what direction are we going in order to get to 2050?

Where do we have to be at 2040?

Where do we have to be at 2030?

You know, I was not thinking about 2100.

I don't plan to be here.

So um just kind of wanted you to know that and then take into account the the surveys we did of the businesses and their parking for the yes.

She asked, does that take into consideration the the unofficial um uh parking permitting uh uh excuse me, I'm getting tired, employee parking, how many people employees we have parking on our downtown every day?

Yes, it does.

I'll be sharing that as well.

And and that uh and then tying that to how many space additional spaces that we need to create.

So yes, I'm there on that.

And then the only other thing under new business was that um again I know nobody is watching us right now because they're sleeping, but when they do, but when they do to turn in, uh tune in, not turn in.

Uh I want them to be aware that on February 17th, the county appraiser is going to be at our library from one to four o'clock to discuss with homeowners their property taxes.

So if they don't understand their bill or they're questioning their bill, so it's not like a seminar, it's gonna be one-on-one help.

So uh if you know anybody that's you know, I don't understand my bill, this makes no sense uh when we hear specifically about people that want to tell us that their property taxes jumped 11,000, you know, on a house that they've owned for a long time, one to four.

They can get some answers in case that is true.

That probably is a mistake that they could get fixed.

So that was all I had under um new business.

So are we safe to say this meetings is the audience okay at this point?

Okay, then we're gonna say meeting adjourned.

Thank you very much.