Mayor Karen Love convened a workshop (not a city council meeting) to discuss traffic flow, speed limits, and parking in downtown Gulfport. She presented a layman’s plan developed over ten years, emphasizing three goals: reduce speeds, increase parking without building a garage, and prepare for future growth. The meeting included a presentation, council discussion, and extensive public comment.
And if you don't have good eyes, come up towards the front a little bit because we do have these blown up maps for you. We want you to see uh what's going on. We want you to hear and understand, and we want your input. So I'm calling this uh workshop, and just to be clear, to make sure you're in the right meeting. This is a workshop, not a city council meeting, and this whole workshop is going to be about one issue and one issue only, and that'll be to talk about the uh traffic flow, speed limits, and parking in the downtown area. So if you thought that this was on Nordic walking, you're in the wrong meeting. Okay. So with that in mind, um, can we have a roll call? Councilmember Donch here. Council Member Shaw, present. Councilmember Early, present. Mayor Love here. City Manager O'Reilly. City Clerk Carico is present. Councilmember Webb has asked to be excused. All right. So if you find the map is distract distracting, just realize that in a few minutes I'm gonna be down there and I'm gonna be walking everybody through those maps, and I want for you to be able to see them so that when it gets to conversation discussion, you'll be clear on what we're talking about. So the way this meeting's gonna happen tonight is I'm gonna say a couple words now, and then I'm gonna drop down there and I'm gonna be talking to my council, and I'm gonna be walking them through this uh presentation, and I'm gonna be addressing slide one, slide two, and slide three. Following that, the council will then have a discussion, and then uh it will be open for public comment. Public comment will follow the same format as always. You have three minutes. We're not talking about anything other than this what's in the room tonight. We're not talking about other uh items tonight. And we'll take in everything that we hear have hear you say and see if this is something that's gonna end up moving forward, getting revamped or being put in the toilet. I mean, we just don't know that answer yet right now. So um, yes, I've heard the rumors. I've read the rumors. I've gotten hate mail. I've also gotten a lot of people saying they really like what I'm trying to do, but they might think of a way that it can be improved a little bit, okay? And that's what we're here for. So I wanted to answer the question why. These are things that are reiterated over and over and over, okay. And I've heard from businesses, residents, and visitors all that we need to address this issue. Now there's never been a consensus on how to address it. All right. Um I even had uh uh somebody say that I should be shot for calling such a meeting, okay. Now I'm sorry, but I think that that's my job is to be proactive and get people talking and raising issues, and that's what I'm trying to do. Um of course, what we got from that meeting was a resounding no, we don't want time parking, we don't want paid parking, and we don't want a garage. Um, as I go to meetings outside of the city of Gulfport, and I'm very fortunate I've been able to travel around the state and go to and see other cities and other meetings and and different organizations. There is definitely no if, ands or buts. The trend these days is to making our cities, our small cities much more pedestrian and bike friendly. There's no doubt about that. So those are things that kind of were all coming at me at once. Okay. Again, I sat out there for 12 years. I heard many, many conversations about, well, let's do a traffic study, let's do this study, let's do that study, and I never saw one happen in all the years that I sat out on that side. So another thing I just want to, I'm just giving you a quick overview, and then I'll go into talking about this specific thing. The last parking improvements that I'm been aware of in the city of Golfport, I believe happened in 2015 and 2016. So 2015 was when we paved and created what we now call as our beach parking lot. For those of you that have been around longer, remember that was a gravel pit it rudd it, no uh defined spaces.