Good evening.

I call this uh May 5th meeting to order.

If there's any chance whatsoever that your phone, the ringers on, just take a second right now and make sure it's not.

I'd appreciate that.

Also would like to say that I understand that sometimes there's side conversations and you feel like you need to check something with your neighbor.

That's totally okay, but take it out to the lobby.

It's almost it's a weird the way the the sound works here, but when anybody's talking out there, I can hear them as clear as day.

So I'm going to ask you as I do it every meeting, please don't do that.

Okay.

So with that in mind, we are gonna start out with our invocation by uh councilmember Webb, and then that will be followed by the Pledge of Allegiance.

So please stand.

All right.

Please join me in a moment of silence.

All right, Lord, make me a channel of thy peace.

That where there is hatred, I may bring love, that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness, that where there is discord, I may bring harmony, that where there is error, I may bring truth.

That where there is doubt, I may bring faith, that where there is despair, I may bring hope, that where there are shadows, I may bring light, that where there is sadness, I may bring joy.

Lord grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted, to understand than to be understood, to love than to be loved.

For it is self-forgiving that one finds.

It is by forgiving that one is forgiven, and it is by dying that one is awakened to eternal life.

Amen.

All righty, thank you so much.

And with that, can we have a roll call, please?

Councilmember Webb here, present.

Councilmember Early, present.

Councilmember Donch here.

Vice Mayor Shaw, present.

Mayor Love, here.

City Attorney Salzman.

Here.

City Manager O'Reilly.

Here.

City Clerk Carico is present.

Thank you.

So tonight we're kind of heavy in the beginning here with presentations.

We have three of them tonight, and we will start with a proclamation for safe boating week, and it will be read by our city clerk.

For nearly 90 million Americans, boating continues to be a popular rec recreational activity.

Gulfport, with its beautiful access to Boca Siega Bay, has an active population enjoying boating, sailing, paddling, and fishing.

During National Safe Boating Week, the U.S.

Coast Guard and its federal, state, and local safe boating partners encourage all boaters to explore and enjoy America's beautiful waters responsibly.

Safe boating begins with preparation.

The Coast Guard estimates that human error accounts for 70% of all boating accidents and that life jackets could prevent more than 80% of voting fatalities.

Through basic boating safety procedures, carrying life-saving emergency, excuse me, carrying life-saving emergency distress and communications equipment, wearing life jackets, attending safe boating courses, participating in free boat safety checks, and staying sober when navigating.

National Safe Boating Week is observed to bring attention to important life-saving tips for recreational boaters so that they can have a safer, more fun experience out on the water throughout the year.

Whereas 560 people died in 2024 in voting-related accidents in the United States, approximately 80% of these are fatalities caused by drowning.

And whereas this is a decrease of seven or excuse me, 14% from previous years due to the efforts of organizations like the U.S.

Coast Guard Auxiliary.

And whereas the vast majority of these accidents are caused by human error or poor judgment, and not by the boat equipment or environmental factors.

And whereas a significant number of voters who lose their lives by drowning each year would be alive today had they worn their life jackets.

Therefore, it be a resolve that I, Karen Love, mayor of the city of Gulfport, Florida, do hereby support the goals of the safe boating campaign and proclaim May 16th through 22nd, 2026 as National Safe Boating Week and the start of the year-round effort to support safe boating and witness hereof.

I have set hereunto set my hand and cause the seal of the city to go seal City of Gulfport, Florida to be a fixed this fifth day of May 2026.

So we're gonna have Mr.

Howard Bush come up to receive um the proclamation.

And we're also going to give him an opportunity to say a few words.

I know that there's something specific happened just very recently.

I know that's part of what he's going to tell us.

So here's our official photo.

Okay.

Good.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council members, Mayor, and City of Gulfport.

Are we tired of hurricane season already?

2024.

Well, as you all know, our flotilla building was wiped out.

But thanks to all of you and your predecessors.

We have a home here in Gulfport.

With use of the neighborhood center on 49th Street for our meetings or safe boating classes.

And a new class we just started on Saturday, you're in command for when your spouse or friend needs to take charge of your boat, and you're disabled.

On April 11th, due to you giving us a corner, thanks to our harbor master, Dennis Frain.

Our VHF radio station, which is a force multiplier for the United States Coast Guard on all search and rescue operations, training, turned training into actual.

We are their lifeline.

They check in with us every 30 minutes, and they're going through the same training that the United States Coast Guard goes through.

We have two radios, one monitoring them on a government channel, the other one monitoring Channel 16.

The National Hailing Frequency.

A man has fallen off a vessel out by the Meisner Bridge in the Skyway Bridge area.

Coast Guard is responding.

Latitude and longitude.

We chart the location.

We have two vessels in Boca Siega Bay training right now.

I call the officer of the day to get permission to put my vessels that are in that area under the Coast Guard's orders and send them to that location.

Because they could be there in 12 minutes.

The Coast Guard would take 37.

Our two vessels went to that location.

Then they're operating as the United States Coast Guard.

They're being coordinated by law enforcement.

They're being coordinated by the Coast Guard.

And it is all hands-on deck effort to find this individual who had fallen off this boat.

FWC.

No one was keeping an eye on this individual.

The coordinates that we received were an estimate.

Latitude and longitude is degrees.

Minutes, seconds.

Those seconds can turn into miles.

The importance of safe boating.

The importance of being aware of the people that you have under your responsibility when you're on your vessel.

But my six passengers were right in front of me.

My mate was standing next to me, and I had a rear observer on the other side of me.

I knew where everybody was at any given time.

This is why we promote safe boating.

For both the captains and the crew, this went beyond training.

That's what they were doing in Boca Siega Bay.

Now it's actual.

Their training turned into reality, and this is something they will remember for the rest of their lives.

And without your support.

And your support and your support, we would not be able to do what we do.

Thank you.

Thank you for all that you do.

Okay, our next presentation is going to be from an extremely uh good group of people.

You may have uh either seen it on uh social media or you met them in person, but we have a group that's known as the Gulf Scholars, led by Dr.

Amanda Haygood, who has been doing a survey of our residents and what they think about our beach for some time now, and they are here to share the results with us.

So please come on up.

Thank you so much.

I want to say thanks to everybody here for making space for this and your agenda.

We are so excited to share our findings with you.

We'll take just a moment to introduce ourselves.

So as Mayor Love said, my name is Amanda Haygood, and I direct the Gulf Scholars program at Eckard College.

My name is John Carrero.

I'm a senior, and my majors are environmental and animal studies.

My name is Summer.

I'm a freshman, and my major is environmental studies and public health.

My name is Jenny Anna Wilner, and I'm thrilled to be here as an Eckert College Senior studying environmental studies.

We have an agenda that we'll share with you.

Mostly what we want to do is tell you a little bit about what our project was, the premise of it, and then really examine the three issues that we were looking at.

Number one, how do people who use Gulfport Beach value the beach?

What do they love about it?

Number two, what are their chief concerns about the beach?

Number three, what of the different resiliency solutions available to us are they most interested in?

And then finally, sharing some next steps or thoughts about directions we could go from here.

So to summarize our project briefly, um, we were so grateful to be able to receive the funding from the Tampa Bay Estuary Program's many grants that allowed us to partner with the city to do what we were calling a public engagement campaign around coastal resiliency.

This really had two parts.

Number one, a series of educational presentations that we gave at different venues in Gulfport.

Number two, a survey that asked about the different kind of areas that I just outlined for you.

So one of the things we learned in the survey is that not all of our respondents were really comfortable with the term coastal resiliency, so I just want to offer this for the benefit of all in the room.

Uh, this is the definition that comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA, um, where coastal resiliency is understood as ways that communities can build up their shorelines so that they can bounce back more quickly and more efficiently after hazardous events like hurricanes, coastal storms, and flooding.

Um, so it's kind of realizing that those types of dangers are inevitable when you live in a coastal environment and shaping your shoreline so it can be more resilient.

I said that we were doing a public engagement campaign, and this slide kind of outlines what we were doing.

You can see many of the places where we gave presentations over on the right.

You can see some of the places where we tabled and surveyed our markets and our tree giveaways, things like that.

We were working from January to April, so about four months, uh gave eight public presentations and collected in all 268 surveys.

To tell you a little bit about who our respondents were.

This graph shows how that breaks down across full-time residents, part-time residents, um, visitors, and then people who classified themselves as others.

This may be people who lived in St.

Pete, for instance.

Um you can see that the vast majority of our respondents were either full-time or part-time residents.

We feel that this is really important because we're trying to get information from folks who have a vested interest in our city, um, who know it well, who spend a lot of time who are invested in it.

Another important thing to outline is that about one-fifth of our respondents did have a home, a business, or both damaged in the storms of 2024.

Now I'm gonna pass things over to Summer, and she's gonna talk about the first part of the survey, the way people value Gulfport Beach.

Thank you.

So, like Amanda just said, I'm gonna be talking about the value of Gulfport Beach, what makes it so special to our residents here.

So we really wanted to get people's input on how frequently they visited the beach, uh, what beach activities people were doing there, and what made the Gulfport Beach so special to them.

So, first was beach uh frequency, how many times people were visiting the beach.

Um, and we heard from people that they were using the beach, which was big.

We were like, okay, well, people are using Gulfport Beach, they're using it for the right reasons, they're going there for relaxation, see friends, family.

Um we saw that out of 50% people 50% of people that we surveyed were going weekly, if not more to Gulfport Beach.

So, like I just said, um, some beach activities that we saw were most frequent that people were doing were relaxation, they were going there to appreciate nature, and they were socializing with friends and family.

Uh, one comment from a community member that we pulled out from our survey explained how uh Gulfport Beach felt like a community gathering hub, really showing its value.

So, what does make what makes Gulfport Beach so special?

And a couple factors are that it's the only public beach on Boca Siega Bay.

Um, it being a bay provides us with many eco system services.

And if you're not familiar with that direct term, um, it is the direct benefits that humans receive from healthy ecosystems.

Um, represented at Gulfport Beach through the healthy seagrass, which helps sustain aquatic life there.

Same slide.

Uh and you can see here one comment from a community member that we thought embodied that why the beach is just so special was Gulfport Beach feels like a destination for local community and is not just a tourist trap.

Now I'm gonna be handing it over to John to talk about the concerns about Gulfport Beach.

Thank you.

So, some of the concerns about Gulfport Beach.

Overall, 85% of respondents are either concerned or very concerned about the future of Gulfport for hurricane season.

Um, on their survey, we had six different topics being water quality, erosion, presence of wildlife, litter, condition of facilities, and safety.

And out of our six different topics, the top three that stood out the most with the most agreement were water quality, erosion, and presence of wildlife.

So to start out with our most agreed topic, water quality being the biggest issue in Gulfport, 82% agreed that it was a concern or very concerning.

Um of our comments that we pulled out from our survey mentioned overdevelopment in Gulfport, and that leads to sewage spills, and overall can make Gulfport not the most desirable beach in Pinellas part or Pinellas County.

Our second most concern that we got from our survey was erosion.

And for example, people are concerned about the vast erosion from hurricanes that comes out of the public tax dollars spent to fix it.

And lastly, wildlife was our third most concern that we got from our survey, with 72% of people either concerned or very concerned about this topic.

People emphasize that they often go to the beach to see wildlife and how it can overall show environmental health.

And this can lead to discussion for a healthier beach, equaling a healthier environment for wildlife and people.

I'm gonna pop back in and talk about the third part of our survey, which was thinking about different resiliency solutions.

So when we surveyed people, we kind of offered four possibilities, ways we could keep maintaining our beach, keep it resilient.

They are just for the benefit of everyone in the room, managed retreat, seawall reinforcement, beach renourishment, and nature-based solutions.

And again, for the benefit of all, I'll just quickly outline what each of those are, and then I'll kind of talk about how people responded.

So managed retreat is kind of the drastic option.

That's the option that says water's coming up, storms are coming in, we need to move as much of our infrastructure and our valuable properties right away from the shoreline.

Move it back, let the shoreline renature, and essentially get everything we value out of the way.

Seawall reinforcement.

I think we're all pretty familiar with seawalls.

That's a strategy we've been using for a really long time to kind of keep the land where we want it to be.

The seawall's just a large bulkhead, right, that's built between the land and the water to keep the land in place.

Beach renourishment, I think many of us in this area have seen too.

That's when we dredge sand from one place to fortify it, put it on a beach so that it's got more sediment, longer beach.

And then nature-based solutions is kind of a big catch-all term.

It's sometimes also known as a living shoreline.

This is where we are using natural elements to try and do some of that work of preventing erosion and approving water quality.

That can happen in a couple of different ways.

Sometimes people use plants, which you might plant either on the sand or emergent plants that go out in the water.

These help to keep sediment in place.

They also you cleanse the water that runs into the beach and provide kind of a water quality benefit as well.

Another strategy that's used under nature-based solutions would be installing oyster reefs or oyster domes that oysters can grow on.

The idea there, that's a little further out in the water.

And the idea there is number one, oysters do also provide a water quality benefit.

I'm very fond of quoting that one adult oyster can filter 50 gallons of water in a day just because it eats.

Pretty amazing.

But another really important thing that structures like that can do is break up wave energy as it's coming in through things like storm surge so that it's not as rough on our beach.

So having outlined those, you can kind of see the various levels of approval.

Those numbers represent people who either approved or strongly approved of that particular solution.

And I want to break down each of those and kind of tell you a little bit more about what people had to say.

I also want to emphasize, you know, it looks as though with seawall reinforcement and beach renourishment, oh, it's like about half as popular as nature-based solutions.

That's true, but I want to add an important qualification, which is for those two in particular, it's not as though everybody was saying, or there were half of the people saying, oh, I really don't like those things.

It was really more some ambivalence that was expressed.

There were a lot of people who picked number three, which is our eh, neutral response.

So I'll get into that a little bit more as I'm outlining these.

So about 44% of people either approved or strongly approved of managed retreat.

I think the consensus among most of our comments there was that, yeah, with sea levels rising, with storms intensifying, this is absolutely something we are going to have to think about, but none of us wants to think about it right now.

And I think that that quote that we have really captures that because it's not as simple as just moving things.

There's all kinds of equity issues with what you move first, the expense of moving, who has to move.

Nobody's quite ready to deal with that, and I frankly don't blame them.

With just a little bit more approved or strongly approved, we have seawall reinforcement.

And the two quotes that I chose there, I think really express the variety of opinions that we got on seawalls in this survey.

On the one hand, people recognize that this is a strategy we've been using for a very long time.

We're very invested in seawalls.

That quote in particular points out that seawalls actually protect some of our really important places, our waterfront restaurants, our recreation center, all of those things that we really want to protect.

On the other hand, some comments talked about seawalls and the cost of seawalls because there is a trade-off when we use seawalls.

For one thing, they do interrupt natural movements of sand.

They definitely limit the way that habitat can build, so they can be a cost to biodiversity at times.

And another person talked about how they are expensive, right?

You you build them, but then there's kind of a constant maintenance process that can become pricey over time.

So I think that explains a little bit of the rating that seawalls got.

For beach renourishment, again, this is a solution that a lot of us are familiar with here in the Tampa Bay Area.

We see it happen quite a lot.

Um again, there was the sense that this is something that we have done for a long time, and we have some trust in this process.

But I thought that this comment was really interesting and sort of talked about the worry that a lot of people have that beach renourishment is a temporary solution, that eventually whatever's pulling the sand from the beach is going to do it again, and you're going to have to renourish.

So this person suggested, for instance, if we renourish, why don't we also add plants or something else that might kind of help to keep some of the sand in place and lengthen the life of that solution?

Finally, nature-based solutions or living shoreline had 85% of people either approving or strongly approving of it for a variety of different reasons, maybe reflecting some of what I've said before about other solutions.

There was the sense, as we see in that first quote, that we need to try something new because we're starting to understand the limitations of some of our traditional ways of preventing erosion on the beach.

Some people also saw the strong ecological value that living shorelines would add a lot of habitat.

That might speak to people who come to the beach to see wildlife.

That they are cost effective.

You have to pay up front, but ideally, if you do it right, the living shoreline grows, keeps on growing and establishes itself well.

But I do want to pull out kind of another sentiment that I think is really important, especially in the context of Gulfport Beach.

There were many people who, while approving in general of the idea of a living shoreline, a nature-based solution, also wondered how we could balance that with all of the uses that Summer was pointing out, the recreational uses of the beach.

This might make sense if you come to the beach to see wildlife for sure, but if you're coming there to directly access the water or to play sports, you need to come up with a solution that allows people to still be able to do that.

So now I'll hand things over to Giniana, who's going to talk about some conclusions we've come to based on this information.

Thank you, Dr.

Haygood.

So from all of the conversations we've had and all the work we've done, we've realized that residents, snowbirds, tourists, visitors alike, all have a real vested interest in the maintenance and protection of Gulfport Beach.

And it's obvious that there is an immense amount of interest and support for living shorelines.

If you would look at the one pages provided in front of you, you'll see a map of some of the living shorelines that have been constructed around the area.

This is not an exhaustive list, nor does it include the constructions that are being started and approved all the time.

This is a real burgeoning field in coastal resilience measures here in the region.

Today I'm going to be going into a deep dive of two current living shoreline projects pretty close to home.

So we can get a better idea of how this may work for Gulfport Beach.

First up, we've got Treasure Bay.

This is a condo and recreational facility in Treasure Island.

It was started because the city of Treasure Island realized that the repairs for the seawalls alone that had not sufficiently protected them from floods would require 1.8 million dollars in funds.

This made them realize that they needed to try something new.

And so what they did was they created a mixture of full seawall removal and partial living seawall, kind of a mixture of vegetation and seawalls, around about 4,000 feet of their shoreline.

Crucially, I want to point out that this also includes the new addition of gazebos, boardwalks, walkable infrastructure.

I think this is a good way to point out that the addition of living shoreline and cultural resilience measures does not mean that we are essentially removing their cultural and social value from the area, and that in fact it can add to it, make it more inclusive.

Additionally, through the added vegetation, there are ecological improvements, those ecosystem services we were talking about before, and water quality improvements.

Next up is Lassing Park.

Now, this is a large urban park in the old Southeast neighborhood of St.

Petersburg.

It has been around forever and it's most well known for its beachfront access.

And just like Gulf Ports, one of the most common activities before the living shoreline was constructed was water recreation, relaxation, nature appreciation.

And before its installation, it was in trouble.

According to a USF and Alcoa Engineering survey, there were severe water quality concerns, and especially with its piping infrastructure.

And 20,000 square feet of its total coastal area had eroded since 1994.

Now, there was a good reason why people were concerned about the water quality.

Before the installation, according to the Tampa Bay Water Atlas, there were levels of endococcal bacteria.

This is a common indicator of water quality, that were up to 10 times above the healthy limit on any given day before the installation.

Now, onto the installation itself.

This was an oyster ball and cord rest system.

Oyster balls, sometimes effectually known as orbs, are essentially these big giant constructions.

If you've ever seen them from Tampa Bay Watch that encourage the adherence of oyster larvae, break up that wave energy like we were talking about.

Because of this, they also provide habitat for fish and other wildlife.

And since then it's become a real family-friendly space.

There are always events on the beach.

I think most recently, and the biggest one was the old Southeast Easter egg hunt.

And it is still a very commonly used space right here.

Now with the water quality improvements, these are public health benefits.

Since its installation, the water quality has since steadily been in the good and healthy range, with the biggest uh divergence from that being the 2024 hurricane season.

But then we quickly saw that the ecosystem was as healthy as it should be, and that bacterial load went down.

This is an example of a living shorelines doing exactly what they're meant to do for our communities.

And that brings us to hurricanes.

So it is generally well known that living shorelines can help mitigate flood and hurricane damage.

And about if you look on the picture right here, you can see the living shoreline and the non-living shoreline, the unconstructed part, right?

The living shoreline takes up about one quarter of the total coastline, about 700 of the 2800 feet available.

And what we've seen, you can see from this picture and from the data that was taken after the 2024 hurricane season, the section of Lassing Park that had the living shoreline had an extremely significant amount of less erosion than the unprotected part.

The unprotected area of the coastline had a significant amount of damage when compared to the living shoreline area.

And this brings me to a quote from Tom Reese, who works at Ecosphere in the area and has done a lot of work in living shorelines around here.

It's a testament to the value of the nature-based shoreline stabilization solutions when they can withstand the worst hurricanes this region has seen in decades.

On to education.

If you see those stats over there, we're seeing that almost one-third of our respondents felt familiar with coastal resilience.

Only less than a third, and 11% of respondents needed to know more information about the topic before making decisions.

These are topics that are extremely important to everyday life, the economy, and tourism here in Gulfport, and just living your life.

So this says to us that there's a real hunger and a desire to know more in Gulfport.

And from that, we suggest that we convene a workshop here, hopefully in the fall of 2026, with the support of the Gulf Scholar Program, the Gulf Impact Program as well.

And we we would like this to be an opportunity to discuss community members' questions, solicit their ideas and concerns about the future and envision a possible living shoreline in the area.

This could likely be facilitated with the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council's trained facilitators.

And this is an opportunity for us to invite even more people to the table than we did in our surveys and make a more comprehensive view of what coastal resilience measures can be like in Gulfport.

Beyond a workshop, it is imperative that Gulfport continues to take its place among larger coastal resiliency measures in the region.

A way to do that is with Tampa Bay Watch.

This is already a trusted partner in the area.

They have been working on Levy Shoreline projects with their expertise in the Veterans Park project, for example.

And they have been they were endorsed by five full-time residents, and they regularly came up in our conversations.

People want to work with them and are intrigued by them.

Furthermore, as we were talking about before about how often you'll see kids playing out there and how important our beach is to the lives of the children of Gulfport.

They also have the Bay Grasses in Classes program, which allows students to get involved in cultural resilience and their ecosystems around them.

Now I'd like to wrap up this one section with a quote.

A living shoreline could be a challenging approach considering the highly developed and populated local area.

But making a more natural and beautiful space to enjoy can only have benefits.

Recreational and economic for Gulfport.

Finally, I'd like to end with a consensus item.

I humbly ask the council to come to a consensus and that the city will support a workshop to solicit and discuss community members' questions about living shorelines at Gulfport Beach, facilitated by the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council's trained facilitators.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

From the Gulf Scholars.

And let's see, our speaking order would put Council Member Webb first.

Any questions?

Are we just doing questions first there?

Okay.

Um was it a convenient sample?

I have methodology questions.

Sure.

Convenient in the sense of we were at the beach, so people who use the beach, yes.

In that sense, I guess maybe that's true.

We did canvassing at the beach, but at the same time, we also did um survey collection at the various different events that we hosted.

I would imagine that you'd have to have some sort of interest in postal resilience to go to those.

Also, we took surveys at the tree giveaway.

So I think that's where we saw you.

Yeah.

Um, and did uh I can't remember for the because you had for the suggested approaches and uses and values and concerns.

Was it a rank system or did we rank the responses?

I know you could pick more than one, but I couldn't remember if it was.

We did have a few ranking questions, but for each of those it was Likert.

Okay.

And the other, hold on.

Uh there are, and I was familiar with uh Florida Bar's property insurance section.

They did a full evaluation of the amount of property taxes we get from our coastal area.

Dick Bachelor was the one who did that, who also set up the environmental uh uh uh a college at um Stetson University for environmental um attorneys involved in the environmental stuff.

But I was wondering if you had come across any of that work too.

No, could you tell me the name again?

Dick Bachelor, and I can email you that.

I'd love that.

Perfect.

And that was the only questions I had in terms of methodology, and it seems very thorough.

Thank you.

Um my only question, I had a similar question to Councilmember Webb.

I was wondering if there's free form when you asked the questions or any of that, but you you actually answered um water quality.

We're surprised at the water quality being so high.

I'm not surprised because people mention it.

But I launch my supp there all the time.

I don't really see a problem with it, but I'm obviously missing it, right?

You're not so you weren't surprised.

Was I surprised that the it was ranked as such a good one?

Yeah, 83.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it does seem very high because we do see people, but on the other hand, like some of the other responses that we got the freeform responses talked about, like, uh, I would swim there, but the water, right?

Yeah, some of it may have to do with it being a bay beach, and that's a little bit different than a Gulf Beach for sure.

Um, but I do think people are nervous about sewage.

Boats came up a lot in the response too and worries about sewage being disposed of correctly there.

Yeah, yep.

Okay, I was just curious.

Thank you, and you guys agree.

Absolutely.

Councilmember Donch.

My only question in the lasting park picture, was it a hybrid shoreline?

Did they have all that extra stuff there too?

Or was it just plants and the area?

The area that was a living shoreline, that's 700 feet was a true living shoreline with a full seawall removal.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yes.

They're asking great questions already.

Um, did you get many responses from um the digital uh questionnaires that you did?

Oh, I would love to take this one.

It's interesting because when I was putting the survey together, I was advised you've gotta get out there and collect paper.

You've gotta get out there and collect paper.

I think people found our survey a little long.

Um we were trying to be thorough.

Um, and so we actually got lots more responses from digital.

Um, and in an effort to make the paper survey a little bit shorter, a little bit easier to take, we took out all of the free responses.

I'm really glad we kept the digital because I think people were taking their time and really composing their answers carefully.

So I can't remember the exact proportion, but I say it's probably close to one-third paper, two-thirds digital.

So it was the opposite of what we expected.

Interesting.

Thank you, community, for responding.

Thank you.

Is that it?

Yes, thank you.

Okay, so I wanted to I I was really um I'm gonna say disappointed to hear that 82% of the people expressed uh concern about water quality because I know that we test our water many times a week, not many, but several times a week, and that it's posted, and it is routinely very, very good, and we've had many people come in here and reference that.

So I'm not so sure that that is an accurate, it's definitely the accurate that 82% think it's a problem, but I don't know that it necessarily is a problem.

And I know for myself, if you get used to these beautiful sandy beaches along our coastline, and then you come and walk into the golf port beach, and whether it's the seagrasses or the mud squishes between your toes, you might not like it, and you go, oh, the water's no good here, but that's not really the case.

So, but I'm glad that you pointed it out because I'm very surprised, and what that tells me is we need to do a better job of educating.

That's what it tells me, because I don't think reality and and you know, is the same.

The second thing is um when you mentioned the oyster bit, are oyster beds and oyster balls different?

Sure.

Okay.

So when we're referring to oyster balls, those are specific manufactured devices.

Those are like two feet tall.

Um most commonly you see them being made by Tampa Bay Watch in the area.

And these are specific devices put in the water to facilitate a living shoreline in the building of an oyster reef, but oysters will set up pretty much anywhere.

That's why those or um orbs work so well.

So oysteries are just a natural part of our ecosystems here in Tampa Bay.

Okay.

So do oyster balls how deep the does the water have to be, or how far out do you typically go off of the shore?

I don't want to mislead you, so I'm not going to give you an exact number.

Okay.

But in general, they're used a lot in our more shallower beaches as well.

Okay, good to know.

And then the third thing is I just curious because I know that we have applied for uh uh um our permit for a suburb submergible.

Easy for me to say uh permit for our living shoreline.

You know, Gulfport was moving forward on a living shoreline, then we got hit by three hurricanes and a pop-up flood, it went to the back burner.

We did apply for that, I believe, um, probably last June, and we're just waiting on that.

So we do you know if any of your respondents were aware that we are moving forward.

Uh we are moving forward on two at this point.

I can jump in and I can say I I don't think so, actually.

Yeah, I think that might be another area where the city can do some more education, some more publicity.

Um, you know, and given our conversations were mostly in reference to the beach, right?

So that could by be why it didn't come up as much, but I definitely think that that's not something that's widely known, and it would be great if it were.

Okay, great.

Thank you so much for coming and sharing um your information and taking the initiative to do this because whether we you know are surprised by the findings or not, we needed to hear the findings.

Thank you so much, guys.

Mayor would we do the consensus now while we're here?

You should do it during your business.

You want to bring it up?

Okay, okay.

And then that brings us to our third presentation for tonight, and that will be done by this.

Uh that will be I'm gonna turn that over to the city manager.

It's called the state of the city, in my opinion.

Uh, all the years that I sat out there and listened to all the meetings, I always found it to be the my favorite meeting because it gives the city employees and department heads a real opportunity to share what has been accomplished in the previous year.

So that being said, um, I would like to turn that over to our city manager.

Thank you, Mayor.

Mayor, this evening we use this as an inform informational and also celebratory.

I'm blessed to have this type of staff that provides such a level of personal service to a lot of residents on an individual basis.

Um what we'd like to talk about is the everyday minutiae.

I hate to say it, you know, everybody will celebrate.

Now Dennis is working on the living shoreline adjacent to the book uh lions club and that area, but it also there's water bills get paid, sanitation functions, those are our core operational aspects.

The senior center, the recreation center.

So we're gonna start out with the behind the scenes behind the curtain, so to speak.

I'd like to invite Chris Cadell, our finance director, to come up and um start with some of the things that happen in the back.

Hi, Mayor, Council.

Thanks, Jim.

It's gonna give you an update overview of uh finance department.

And um first slide gives you a high-level overview of our uh department's key responsibilities.

Uh oversight begins with the annual operating budget, preparation and compliance.

Um as you all know, we're starting the process now for next fiscal year.

Um so that'll be coming to you all uh in July to uh start that discussion.

Um reporting, our annual audited financial statements.

That's um actually we're wrapping up our fiscal year uh September 25 right now.

And um we'll be coming to you uh in June to present our audit from uh last fiscal year.

Um large part of the budget process, you'll hear us talk about trim.

That's truth in Millage, and that's how we report and receive the ad valorum or property tax revenues.

It's pretty complicated and strict process dictated by state statute.

And that process will be started in July when tax city taxable values are certified by the property appraiser.

We'll be coming to you all with the millage rates and the budget process.

So that'll be working through over the next few months.

So you'll be hearing a lot more about that as well.

The next two items are kind of the day-to-day stuff.

Jim mentioned, we gotta uh receive our money, we got to pay our bills.

Um we have a number of funding sources that come through, they require um additional reporting, tracking, um, cash disbursements, purchasing payments have to get distributed, um, and there's a uh number of um strong internal controls the finance department has to adhere to ensure uh the fiscal stewardship over the distortion process next slides covering a few key metrics and accomplishments for the finance team.

Um the uh fiscal year 26 budget, the year we're operating in right now, the general fund budget is 21.8 million.

We um not included on the slide, but additionally, we have the enterprise funds that covers the sanitation, the water sewer, and the marina funds.

Uh for those that's a combined budget of 17.6 million, and um by far the largest component of that is 11 million water and sewer and about three million each for marina and sanitation.

Um another accomplishment achievement.

We had to work on the FEMA line of credit loan.

So we got that secured that secures five million dollars line of credit.

Um, if another disaster occurs, let's hope we don't need it, but we do have uh five million dollar line of credit, and we haven't had to use it yet.

Um another big item uh collaborating with HR risk management, the FEMA reimbursements, insurance reimbursements.

Um we've received 6.5 of insurance, 1.3 of FEMA.

Um Shannon, who you'll hear from later, is kind of the point person administratively working with FEMA and with insurance.

Um so it's a collaborative effort, team effort.

There's a lot that goes on to uh work through the process and receive those funds.

Um accomplishment for the team, the department.

Um we receive the GFOA certificate of achievement for our fiscal year 24 audit financial statements, and um we're gonna apply for that again for fiscal year 25 when we finish that up here in the next couple weeks.

Um and you can see a picture of the team there, and uh they kind of make it all happen.

I I couldn't do it without them, so thanks to the team.

And last slide covers um number of significant grants the cities received.

Um, we continuously seek out the grants and other funding sources.

This shows um number of grants received over the past several years.

So you can see um uh almost 10 million dollars there in the grants we've received.

So in a nutshell, that's what we got.

Thank you.

Quick question.

Sure.

Are the grants just for this previous fiscal year?

No, they're cumulative over the last about three to four years.

Um covers uh about the last five years.

The the top ones are the most recent that are currently and ongoing.

You get down lower on the list, and those are some of the older ones, but we like to to show what we've received.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Hello, how are you?

Okay, all right.

Um HR.

Uh not super exciting, so bear with me.

Introduce yours introduce yourself because a lot of people out there don't know you.

They don't know me.

I'm Shannon Farrell, Director of Risk Management and Human Resources.

Um, very behind the scenes.

I don't deal with that many residents.

Um, so I'll make this quick and uh painless.

So there's a party of two, me and Carmen, she's the HR assistant, so we handle all of the HR and risk functions.

We manage all the employee life cycles.

So we do the recruiting, the onboarding, um, the background checks, the drug screens, the medical, the physical.

We do all of their payroll records.

We do payroll bi-weekly.

Carmen is the payroll guru.

She does all the uh apparel reporting that's uh happens on a quarterly basis.

We do all the W-2s in-house for our employees.

Um we oversee the employee benefit program.

So we have a lot of different benefits for our employees.

We do health, dental vision, life insurance, long-term disability.

We have an EAP program.

Um, we have a uh discount center through the EAP.

There's a bunch of benefits for the employees that we do on our open enrollment.

I will come back every year to do the health renewal, life and uh renewal, and long-term disability renewal.

Um we also do all the risk management efforts, so I do handle all the claims, whether it be auto accidents, property, general liability, workers' compensation.

Um we have a quarterly safety committee that I do coordinate with different members of the city, different employees.

We have a parks employee, a marina employee, um fire department.

We all come together, we talk about uh different um issues that we see throughout the city, how we can be safer, what we could do to make it a better environment for our employees.

Um I went through we do all the lines of insurance, so I do uh reconcile the health bill every month, life bill, long-term disability.

Um we do the property and casualty insurance bill every quarter along with uh general liability and property.

So it's again more boring things.

Then we do FEMA claims, um which are fun.

Uh FEMA claims are never ending.

Um they're years long.

Uh we also work very closely with FDEM, the state, because they have a portion of our claims that they pay as well.

Um, and you'll see a slide that kind of breaks down what we have from them.

We uh develop and maintain our personnel manual and policies.

You guys just uh were brought our personnel manual to update back in April, so thank you for that.

Uh we do the volunteer and the internship handbook and application.

We have to run the background checks for every volunteer that we have for the city.

Then we do our wonderful labor laws.

We work with our um insurance carrier who have like a handful of attorneys that I can bounce ideas off of.

I bought I bother uh attorney salesman on a regular basis.

Um, and then we do uh union negotiations.

We have uh two police unions and a fire union that I sit on and assist with that.

So that's HR in a nutshell.

Here are some of our statistics.

So last year we received a 1.5 increase in our health insurance, which was very exciting for the city.

Um, and then we only had a 10% increase on the property and general liability, which is also very great considering our claims that we've had from the store.

We revised the personnel manual, we hosted the luncheon.

There's a wonderful pictures of our luncheon.

There's me and Carmen up there.

Again, she's a godsend.

We all love her.

Then we had about 200 employees that we manage the payroll and HR functions for, and then um our list of from January 2025 to current what kind of claims we had.

So, in my opinion, those aren't super high, which is kind of nice.

Only 12 workers' comp claims, you know, out of our 200 employees, 10 auto and 18 properties.

So our employees are wonderful, they're very cautious, they're safe, they do what they're supposed to, and I couldn't be happier with them.

Then this slide, I'm gonna preface with okay.

It looks a little bit wonky.

The Hurricane Helene column is very stressful because we did not make money off of the storm.

I'm gonna say that we did not make money.

It looks like we did, but we did not.

So in the current expenses, that does not include what we because we have not had any current expenses to the South Basin, the floating docks, or the casino itself.

So you're gonna add lots of millions of dollars in there once we get there.

These are actual paid invoices that we have had.

Um then we have our NFIP claims, and then the P and C is our property casualty, and then at the bottom is what we have uh received from FEMA.

So the only one on this list that we could say is pretty final is Debbie.

So Debbie, that one is done.

It cost the city about 24,000 for Debbie.

So the other ones are work in progress.

These are numbers have already changed because we've already done a check run, and my expenses have changed.

So this was fun for the five minutes that it was true, and it has been updated.

So that's what I have.

Any questions?

Which um I know that the beach cost us a lot of money.

So where did we put that?

Did we put that against Helene?

Not Milton or the beach was Milton.

The beach was Milton.

The beach was Milton, and only certain parts of the beach were covered under insurance, like the lights, the fence, the sand was not, and since it was not an engineered beach, FEMA did not cover the beach either.

Since then, uh Kendricks has done a heck of a job to make sure that it will be considered an engineered beach.

He is meeting with Beach Bob from FEMA, and moving forward.

Anything else?

Thank you.

All right, thank you very much.

Very much thank you, Claire.

Good evening.

I'm Clark Stryker.

I'm the community development director.

Ummunity development basically were three individual divisions permitting planning and code enforcement.

Um we have that occurred in the last 15 months, which was the scope of this request for information.

Uh we had 21,035 incoming and outgoing phone calls, 94,209 incoming and outgoing emails, and 3,240 in-person contacts in our department.

Some of our accomplishments as a community development department.

We implemented the forerunners software.

We have a contract with them.

We are continually training with them.

That's training for how to use the forerunner in the case of damage assessments.

Um we've also executed a contract in coordination with Pinellas County to have Lemoine provide us people to from workforce.

They've also worked with us previously to provide us help to do the substantial damage estimates as well as detailed damage assessments after the fact.

If we need them, we're assuming we're never gonna need them again.

Pardon me.

I said if we need them.

We're absolutely hoping we never have to speak to them or no title contract.

Yeah, no title based.

But we are prepared.

So they will give us whoever we need depending on the severity of the storm to be able to accomplish those damage assessments.

We're not going to be relying on a private provider issue or brought to us by the state through F Dom.

That was the situation prior.

Um the we're continuing, we are constantly converting our forms into fillable forms, putting them on our websites.

We're probably a good ways away or can through it, but we do have some work to continue on that.

Um we're also have ongoing renovations in our department.

We've split up the permit text, so one is at one counter, one's at another counter.

It alleviates some congestion and confusion through the permitting process.

Um you can see that we issued in the same period 3,297 permits.

Collected 1,456,687 in permit and review fees.

We issued 3,215 contractor permits because we have a separate permit now for owner builders.

Uh of those 3,124 had reviews completed.

We also issued 82 owner builder permits in that time period, and those had 305 plan reviews completed for owner builder.

37 of the permits that were applied for were new residential building permits, and 29 of those had been issued.

Uh also three new commercial buildings applied for, and two of those have been issued.

Also in that time frame, we completed 10,385 inspections.

So we go to permitting achievements.

One of our permit takes became certified permit technician through the International Code Conference.

When we do our next ISO rating, that certification will help improve our ISO rating.

All of our permitting forms have been made fillable and are on the website.

Updated website with, we've updated the website, our page on the website with relevant and useful permitting instructions and information.

We've created a standard operating procedure for permit processing, try to eliminate some of the little mistakes that happened during that process.

A lot of those pertain to how permits are submitted on the portal, but we have to try to catch those and correct them before they actually become a permit.

So we've uh we've also made payments for permits available on the portal in addition to the phone payments and the in-person payments that we already take.

Increase the availability to review applications by having a dedicated building official and three additional plan reviewers provided by CAP government.

They also provide our inspections.

Give people a little more work area at the counter, and things like that.

We've had five site plan reviews, 20 various applications, one conditional use approved, six doggy dining permits issued.

Our planner was promoted to acting planning administrator.

He also became certified as a flood plan manager.

And the comprehensive plan was adopted and approved by the state.

Code enforcement.

We had 2,258 code enforcement cases opened in that period of time.

1,728 open code cases and 530 activity code cases.

Improved public safety by addressing hazardous conditions.

Clear and transparent presentations at all special magistrate hearings.

I don't know if any of you have seen some of the special magistrate hearings, but they're very detailed and buried all the information is there.

Um code enforcement officer two, which is a the primary code enforcement officer, implemented the connect suite for electronic certified return receipt mailings.

It saves us about a hundred and a dollar fifty-eight per mailing.

Um we also did utilize a late duty police officer uh keep him employed uh for four months while he was on light duty.

Um attended the uh FAC, which is the Florida Association of Code uh Enforcement.

Susan's also a member of the Tampa Bay Association of Code Enforcement and attends their bi-month meetings.

So that pretty much covers it for us.

Thank you.

We have a question.

Um I do get a couple of asks and emails about the permitting for the RVs in the yard.

Is that listed here?

Does that's not a common ask, or is it just happening in my mind?

Committing in the yard, that would be the uh the second that's what I thought.

Yes, so is it in the it's in the green bubble?

I don't sorry, I don't see it here, so maybe it's just prevalent in my ward.

Well, if it's if it's actually about permitting, it's probably going to be in the public record requests, yard sale permits, sanitation pickups in that section of it.

We don't receive that many applications.

Okay.

Because we do have an application for that.

Okay, thank you, Claire.

You're absolutely welcome.

Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

I think a lot of times people when they talk about code enforcement or um the permitting, they really don't understand that there's three segments involved with community development.

Hi, Riley.

Mayor, I'd like to take the opportunity and myself to introduce Sonia.

She's done unbelievable activities, and this is the one department that besides sanitation, it touches every resident.

Hello.

Hello.

My name is Sonia Levert.

You're the touchy person, huh?

Yeah.

I am the director of utility billing customer service.

So this is a quick snapshot of the activities that our department has managed throughout the typical year.

So these are around about the numbers that you'd see.

So we have about six thousand service locations that we support throughout the city, and our customers contact us in a variety of ways.

So we have our regulars that we call them that visit us at the front counter in our lobby, but we also have we've noticed an uptick in a couple of other areas, the digital areas, sort of like the first presentation was talking about.

So we've received over 14,000 calls, and we've responded to over 10,000 emails, and we have sent over 14,000 text notifications to our customers concerning their utility service accounts.

So beyond customer communication, we also coordinate operations with the public works department.

So our department has created over 7,000 service orders to be sent out, as well as 1,300 leak investigations, and these are my favorite.

So these are the meter data logs where if someone's concerned about their consumption, um questioning if they have a leak, this is what we pull.

It shows an hour by hour consumption log.

We can research and maybe find in a possible issue.

So we have also completed 218 public records requests, and I don't want to miss this one.

So we have over 2,000 residents currently enrolled and caring for the environment by being enrolled in e-billing.

So what this means is your bill is actually sent to the email address on file, which helps save on a postage, paper, and envelopes.

This is the team behind the numbers.

And from left to right, we have Yolanda, Susan, Craig, Justine, and myself.

And together, every day, we work with residents answering questions, resolving issues, and coordinating services throughout the city.

So if you've ever called the city with the utility question, or if you call the main line and you press zero as a switchboard, you're talking to one of us.

Okay, so looking ahead, we've got really exciting future projects up our sleeves.

So you're getting a sneak peek at what our plans are here.

So we've got a new billing system.

We plan on this is a priority number one for us.

Um we're currently on a system from 2003.

Um so our plan is to upgrade, replace this system, which is gonna improve our efficiency, strengthen our reporting, and expand digital services for residents.

All of these three things actually work together in tandem.

So the next one is the AMI network.

So this is actually a public works project that was brought before you all that you voted on and approved.

AMI, do you know what that stands for?

It is advanced meter infrastructure.

So these also are called radio towers, um stuff like that.

So what this does is it's going to provide more frequent meter data collection.

Let me go ahead and say also that this is not my project.

This is run by public works.

So Kendrick Kendrick's Anderson, our public works works director, and Dwayne Stefansky, our utility superintendent, they're leading this project.

But we're all going to benefit from it.

So what this does is it's going to give our office more frequent meter data collection.

So currently, right now we use um an AMR system.

So that's where our guys go out in the field and read one time a month with this AMI technology.

We would be able to get reads every single day and possibly even more than that.

So with that information, we would be able to identify potential leaks much sooner, so daily instead of every 30 days.

So the last part of this is an enhanced customer portal.

So we want to take the information that we currently have in our hands once this is complete and pass that along to every single resident to the city of Gulfport.

So we want people to be able to track their own water usage.

We want them to be able to manage their utility accounts online, and the coolest feature I think is to enroll in water usage alerts.

So you'd have the option to sign up for a notification that's either an email or a text, and you could set your own parameter.

So in that system, you could say, Notify me if I use over a hundred gallons per day, and the system would automatically send you a notification, which I think is pretty cool.

So all together, we believe that these projects would help the city become more transparent, efficient, and responsive to our residents' utility services.

So thank you very much.

I have one question there.

Sonia just a minute.

I know I have one, but I think Jennifer uh council member Webb is first.

Sure.

I just what's your timeline on these techniques on the billing system, AMI network, and customer portal?

Okay, so we went out to bid for the billing system, and it's currently in review.

So I'm sworn to secrecy and can't really talk about it.

Um not really.

Um, but like when do you think you'll make so this fiscal year you think you'll make a decision on this?

Awesome.

Oh, yeah, it's exciting.

Okay.

Um, yeah, and the towers.

I Kendrix can talk more about the timeline with that, but that's coming up soon.

Um, and then once we actually have the billing system and the towers functioning, we would then add on that enhanced customer portal because you need those other two pieces.

Excellent.

Thank you, Sonia.

Yeah.

Do you have any questions?

Any questions over here?

So I have to tell you, I have the advantage she's looking this direction.

I have never seen somebody somebody get so excited over talking about utility service improvements.

Yeah.

Yeah, she's just like almost jumping out of her skin talking about this.

Um, which is exciting to me, but I also had the opportunity to sit with her one time when she was explaining to me uh the metrics that she has, so that if somebody says, Well, I have a water leak, uh, you know, or my bill is way too high, and I don't know why.

She sat with me one time and and explained to me.

Well, I can tell you they get up at six o'clock every morning.

I can tell you they take their shower at 6 20.

I can tell you they started the coffee.

I can tell you what time they I mean, the whole thing.

These are guesses.

I'm not looking through your windows.

Yeah, I promise you that.

Um, she was just able to walk through the whole entire process.

And then the funniest part was when we had one person that was saying their bill was too high, and it was just them and their wife, and they didn't understand why.

And I begged and pleaded and begged and pleaded to get them to come in and sit with Sonia.

We found out there were actually children that they failed to mention.

So thank you so much.

You're very welcome.

All righty.

Public works.

Hi, good evening, council.

Kendrick Sanderson, Public Works Director.

Uh, before I forget uh begin, uh, while Dr.

Amanda Haygood is here, I have the luxury of working with her and her golf scholars team, and it's such a pleasure that they're here presenting.

And I definitely hope we can get some future funding so we can support their group and their initiatives.

Um public works.

I don't want to bore you with too many slides.

I have 23.

But but no, I'm just messing with eight of them.

Um so we are public works department, we have 37 full-time employees, and we consist of our fleet management, our utility division would have sewer, stormwater, and water, and we have our sanitation and streets, and we also have our building maintenance and our parts division.

Uh just I didn't want to bore you all with too much data because that would be 22 slides, but um trash collected in the year 2025 is 10,582 tons, recycling, 618 tons.

Uh the sidewalk repair replace, this is 2025 numbers.

Now, once we complete phase two, we'll have an updated uh quantity for it for council to present.

But as of 2025, we had 2200 square feet.

Um road repairs, we had 8,326 square feet.

That doesn't include any capital road repairs, which I'll show you on the next following slides.

Alleys regraded, 27,000 square feet, and we have been utilizing granite gravel, which has been a very effective uh program uh that council approved a few years ago to give us money to uh apply that material, uh especially in our beach areas where we're having prone uh flooding.

So the granite gravel is a great program.

Uh and once again, uh we do have a long list.

If I can let the public know, we are keeping track of the list and we are addressing them as we come along.

So sign repairs after the hurricane, we had quite a few signs end up missing and drifted away, so we had 112 sign repairs last year.

And the storm pipes lined.

Uh, we had 915 linear feet of storm pipeline.

Okay, so uh in 2025, council approved a 300,000 dollar project to inspect and um clean and inspect our storm system.

So that project consisted of various areas throughout the city, starting from the south and the beach end, and then we worked in the Stetson area, then we did some work in the marina, so we tried to include all parts of the city at that time.

Uh we did 18,000 linear feet of uh inspection and cleaning, and so what that data we're gonna take and put that into our GIS program where we can utilize the pavement could uh sorry, pipe condition assessment program that we have, and then we can identify where our areas where we need to do repair and replacement, uh not necessarily upgrades for flooding, but it's just basically address where we're having our issues with for an example in the beach area.

We have quite a few corrugated metal pipe, and as we know with salt water and metal, they don't mix real well.

So items like that.

Um Dwayne and his staff, Dwayne Stefansky, who is the utility superintendent, uh his staff are working on identifying uh priority areas so we can come back to council for uh a report as far as what we need to accomplish.

Uh and you can see on the left's picture that's just uh one of our uh actually that's a lot uh not live, but that's an actual photo we captured of one of the pipes, and you can see a route growing through there.

So those are fun to handle because you actually have to use a root cutter with these looks like chainsaw and it just spins around and you hope you don't damage the pipe when you're in the process.

So a lot of math involved with that.

Um annual road paving.

So, as we all know, we do in our Penny for Pinellas, we uh do an annual road paving uh project.

Uh last year we spent five four hundred thousand dollars, which got us about 1.4 miles of poor and very poor roads paved.

Um, as we continue on, we will continue uh we will keep addressing the poor and very poor roads, and uh as far as next year's if we get approved for a capital fund, as I believed the last presentation I showed you our uh our proposed area, and once again, these are all included into our GIS system so we can keep track and update our PCI as we go along.

Okay, so this year or yeah, this year we actually completed our watershed uh master plan and our vulnerability assessment.

So our watershed master plan was an evaluation of our storm system and our low-lying areas, and uh and what it did was identified our vulnerable spots and um provided us an options as far as capital projects.

Uh, they were called BMPs, and uh what we would be pursuing with those is uh identifying the areas where uh we can help alleviate the flooding and the tidal influence.

Uh for an example, we applied for grants for the marina district, which is a tidal influence uh area.

So uh we're looking at actuating valves.

The grant is still in the state hands, so hopefully we'll get some answers soon.

And we uh put in the budget for next year of $500,000 for a BMP 3, which is at 60th and 20th Avenue to help address the flooding issues out there, and our vulnerability assessments, which tied into that, which was covered by the state, it was no cost associated with that.

Um, identified our critical assets and uh exposed, use that word, but expose where we're our weaknesses are and that being with the next steps we have on that, we are applying for a grant with the adaptation uh plan.

And then once we do the adaptation plan, then we can go into an uh implementation plan.

So the adaptation plan is gonna be if we receive it, will be covered completely by the state, and that will allow us to go out and dive deeper into how we're gonna address these critical assets, and that would be including uh community engagement providing council uh workshops.

So if we identify, hey, we want to let's just use for an example our lift stations, we want to put pumping.

I'm gonna not a popular thing, but let's say we want to put stormwater pumps uh by the lift stations to ensure they don't get affected during a uh hurricane or high rain event.

That would be something we would put in our plan, and then we will start the next steps with implementation.

So vulnerability assessment is was a very uh important thing to help us move forward with rants.

Um watershed management plan, surprising enough.

I you know, I've I talked to other surrounding communities and we met with Pinellas County uh uh public works a few weeks ago, and they were extremely impressed with our our plan.

So thank you for allowing us to do that, and uh we'll continue to grow as a living document, so we'll just continue and improve.

But they were extremely impressed on our plan.

We're ahead of the game.

Um Hoyt Field, okay.

So after the hurricanes, we had we had two debris management sites, and we were one of the lucky city.

Well, I'm not gonna say lucky because we actually took the initiative to certify two sites, but we were one of the few cities in the southern portion of Pinellas County that weren't hunting hunting to try to find debris management sites.

We had our own already certified, ready to go.

Actually, to the point to where other cities were asking us to store debris, and unfortunately, you know, conversations had to be no, we can't do it.

The FDOT wanted to use our debris sites.

So uh we had two debris sites, one was and I didn't include a photo on here, but one was at the 49th Street uh neighborhood center in the material storage yard, and that's where we kept a lot of our C and D construction debris material and Hoytfield.

Hoyt field we kept all our vegetation uh and right there on the photo, you can see it's approximately 60,000 cubic yards of vegetation that was collected from the right-aways.

So after we cleared everything out, we had to mulch it down and we hauled it away.

Tim Connor, public uh park superintendent and his staff were able to restore the ball field within I don't even think it was more than a month, returfing the uh the area with 80,000 square foot of uh ball field turf, and the total cost of that was 110,000.

And we hope to never use Hoyt Field again.

But uh it is there if we need it, and now we know we can do it with uh what we have.

So 49th Street is certified.

I'm gonna not even gonna touch that again if we don't have to, but um 56th Street and 27th Avenue.

We Hurricane Milton with the volume of water and the speed it came down on 56th Street.

It uh it went underneath the bricks, uplifted it, washed away the material underneath the base, the limestone in the sand.

So the photo you can see there is what the uh impact of the damage from the uh hurricane, and then afterwards is the repairs that were made.

And at that time we had 3,000 square feet of brick repaired, and that was done all by hand.

Uh contractor was phenomenal to come out there and no machinery, it was just hand.

I I'll tell you what, the machines they had was a plate compactor and a wheelbarrow.

So they were really good.

Um and we also utilized them.

I didn't include a photo up here, but we also utilized them on 53rd Street right by City Hall over here, and they did the same thing, and uh that was approximately um 5,000 square feet that was completed in 2025.

Uh 54th Street and Shore Boulevard intersection repair.

So this one was a challenge due to the fact how close we were to the water, and we had multiple utilities involved.

Uh what it included was the installation of um 112 linear feet of sheet piling, uh 800 feet uh square feet of uh sidewalk.

What we did was we decided to include an additional three 24 inch reinforced concrete pipe to hopefully capture that water so this doesn't happen again.

Um and uh we mentioned previously about the living shoreline uh and Priscilla Kitter and with the authorization to council, she put in the application through the Tampa Bay Estuary program.

So we're hoping that that goes through, and I think this is definitely a viable um aspect that we can use toward uh resiliency for the for the uh for Veterans Park.

Gulfport beach restoration that was touched on a little earlier.

So that consisted of 2,000 cubic yards of sand trucked in, uh 6,600 uh square feet of sheet piling 20 feet long with an additional concrete cap.

And this took a lot of coordination with Pinellas County uh coastal management, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the U.S.

Army Corps of Engineer Engineers, excuse me.

And we just recently received our permit closeout from the Army Corps of Engineers, which is great.

And as uh Miss Shannon Farrell mentioned, we are going to be meeting with FEMA to do the closeout for the engineered beach to ensure that future storms unfortunately they will occur, that we are definitely reimbursed.

Um and as mentioned previously, some of the efforts that uh Dr.

Manna Hagood mentioned uh regarding making the beach more resilient with uh plannings, those are the study uh that they provided and the impact uh input they gave us is gonna help uh drive us into that right direction, how we're gonna approach the beach.

So very excited for the future to make it more resilient.

So some of the projects that are coming up.

Uh we do have our completion of the 58th Street roadway projects.

That should be wrapping up in June.

We're actually really good on schedule because we didn't get hit with much rain, unfortunately.

So we will be wrapping it up in the next few months.

Um phase two of the sidewalk improvement project, uh which was uh zone one.

We'll be uh we've already wrapped that up.

We're gonna just be uh reconciling our numbers and phase three, which I brought tonight for your approval, uh, which will be uh consisting of zone two would be uh obviously completed this year.

Uh 49th Street phase phase one improvements in demonstration, and for those who don't know, to 49th Street Phase 1 is the uh improvements of the crosswalks, the signal signage uh through 22nd Avenue to Fifth Avenue, uh and it's in with coordination with the city of St.

Petersburg.

We don't have a timeline yet.

We're we're still working the uh the formalities on that, but hopefully within the next few months I can come back with the with a hard timeline.

Uh the demonstration project is gonna be a little bit further out.

Uh, but we uh we did receive as the council know $800,000 through the USDOT.

Um, and that's also with coordination with the city of St.

Petersburg.

So hopefully in a few more months we can also have an update on that.

I'm hoping they're not both at the same time, but we'll we'll make sure we coordinate it to where it's it's not so and then our our town shores water line improvement project that is the installation of a 12-inch water main through town shores to help increase uh and improve water capacity going to the buildings.

Um we anticipate going out to bid at the end of the year and completion of the project in June 2027.

Um so we're just working out some more details as and as of now, so and that's the status of that, and then priority, and then we received a 1.3 million dollar grant for that, uh, as uh Chris Cadell mentioned earlier.

And uh priority three sanitary sewer repairs, which is a 2.5 million dollar grant through the EPA, uh, no match.

Uh we are working on uh form uh formalizing some documents and we anticipate to start at the end of the year identifying some of our high priority storm uh sanitary sewer lines and addressing it.

And this is something that has been going on uh uh Mr.

O'Reilly, I think the past 10 years we've been working on this.

So um we're just gonna continue on and and uh definitely look forward to the future for that.

And I think I captured oh the touch base on um Miss uh uh Sonia's uh mention of the AMI.

So we're looking at getting the um the polls, the five locations installed July, and the hardware will be a little further out.

So once we anticipate by fiscal year coming up, we should have them live available for our our our use.

The NEP2360 is gonna be just for us for right now, and then when um Sonia and her team roll out the new system, we'll allow it to be uh available to the public.

Great, and that's I guess in the next one is thank you.

Okay, oh no, I took my thank you away.

Okay, but thank you.

Do you have any questions?

Thank you.

Thank you, Sarah.

Okay, great.

Before you sit down, anybody quick question?

Are we good?

Sure.

I have a question.

Um what um department is the adaptation plan grant going through?

I'm sorry.

The adaptation planning grant, what department is that going through for the watershed management plan and vulnerability assessment.

Oh, as far as the funding for the grant, uh the state.

Which state DP?

Yes, sorry.

And uh the 2.5 million on the priority three sanitary sewer infrastructure.

Does that impact the revolving um loan that we have at all?

The federal okay as a federal grant appropriate.

But it doesn't like no okay, all right.

No, the revolving loan is already spent.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

All right, thank you.

Thank you very much.

And that takes us to information technology.

You're dirty.

Funny if I didn't know how to work this.

There we go.

Okay.

So uh my name's David Mather.

Um, hold on just a minute.

Okay, great.

Go ahead.

Okay.

My name's David Mather.

I am the assistant city manager, but as with a lot of my colleagues, I wear a lot of different hats in the city.

One of them is information technology.

So I'm gonna take you through uh the Gulfport information technology, and then I'm gonna kind of bleed into communications, which will dovetail nicely with Justin, uh and he'll be next.

Um, so the first thing I wanted to talk about was the fact that you have a very unique uh information technology department in that you have no employees in that department.

Um it is uh all managed services, which is great.

Um we have uh a company that works for us, and we have what they call in IT a 40-hour week asset, which is an employee, fancy where you save employee, uh, that sits uh just like a regular employee, but he is employed by that company.

Um we also have uh monitoring 24-7 on our smart switches, our servers.

Uh for my part, I deal mainly with the contracts with compliance with uh helping with just about anything that another uh department wants.

So that's the other piece that's unique to information technology is that I've got two different customer bases.

I have external customers, which is citizens, and then I have internal customers, which is all the employees.

So here's the statistics.

Um hundred and ninety-three thousand views over the period, uh January 1, 2025 to April 1st, 2026.

Um we are the top five websites um at that time period.

We're community development, surprise, uh events, Gulfport Public Library calendar and bill payment.

And I'd like to point out ever since we started doing this, Gulfport Public Library has been in the top five.

Um besides that, we have 187 workstations, 25 servers that we maintain, and this ticket number is 280, 2843 tickets because we document everything that that company does for us.

So if an employee is hired, if they're retiring, if they need a new keyboard, anything like that, we document in a ticket so we know where we are with it.

So that's a very important number.

We also deal with 170 mobile devices, and we manage 118 devices.

These are managed devices, as in, like I was uh saying earlier, switches, network switches, firewalls, things of that nature.

These are some of the implementations that I was involved in.

Some of them may sound familiar, like uh Forerunner.

Uh, you'll probably hear about Gov QA later.

Uh, the good news is some of these, like Forerunner, um, Clark staff and Justin took that and ran with it, so I didn't really have to deal much with that besides in the beginning.

Uh, but uh with every piece, and this is just stuff that we implemented during that time period.

Obviously, we have tons of other softwares that we deal with.

And there was some other things that we did, like uh moving to QuickBooks Online, things of that nature.

Uh, but these were the main big launches that I was involved with either partially or throughout, or uh with uh TelevoIPs, which is our new phone service, and of course the uh the Redux of the MyGoalport.us, I was involved all the way through.

Um, so those were just some of them.

Uh then we get into some other things.

We've done we did a lot of server replacements.

Um we did a significant portion of the city's network switching infrastructure was replaced last year.

Um and we prioritized upgrading systems from Windows 10 to Windows 11, which you know sounds kind of boring, but that's integral when they do this, it's end of life.

And once if you don't get that in time, then you have some security issues, and that's a lot of different computers to touch for just a few people.

Um here's some Facebook things, and uh I want to point out here um the mayor here, because it's pretty cool.

Um, and not just because you're my boss's boss, of course.

It's really actually pretty significant.

Um, we had uh Facebook posts, 479 posts, and over a million uh views of those posts.

But out of those 13 or 1.3 million, 591 million were of Mayor Love's posts, and she posted 144.

So that makes up 43% of all views, and that's significant.

Um so I just wanted to point that out.

Um but this this is our Facebook.

Uh we do a lot, and we've gotten a lot of new people to actually uh watch Facebook now, so we're getting a lot of views, and it's been pretty great.

So we we post a lot of information here.

But in addition to this, each department does have a Facebook account.

Um I didn't break down each one uh because I didn't want to put you through that, but but that's I just want everybody to know that we do have one for every department.

Um and this is where we get into Justin's piece to this.

Um of my hats, I'm Justin Shea, Cultural Facilities Event Supervisor.

One of the hats, I provide support with the information technology department, uh, public information officer, uh providing support to departments to run the operation.

Um I wanted to show you what the marketing department we can have one person in that department.

Her name's Kristen, she's the marketing specialist.

She handles the website for updates as well as Dave and I.

Um, she handles the electronic newsletter we send every Monday for programming, working with event organizations.

Um, she also manages our constant contact list, and I wanted to show the growth of that list.

Um, in five years, that list size is up 40%, and that also includes people who have unsubscribed from the list.

Um this is the uh emergency tool that we use, Mayor, during storm events when we announce where sandbag distribution locations are available.

Um, in addition to constant contact, um, wanted to show you that we provided post-storm response support in the community development department since January when City Manager O'Reilly activated the PIO the communications team.

Um we provided on-site support to help with the um volume of uh tasks needed during the recovery period.

Um so I just pulled data from the cell phone and and tracked that 60% of those incoming calls were from residents and people asking about what uh to do next, where's my permit type thing?

And these numbers are in addition to what the community development department reported from their system.

Um, this was strict from January to June of 2025.

Um there's been a lot of mention about the Forerunner software.

Uh that is a new system.

This is a screenshot of that system.

Ideally, residents have the ability to go and and and research their property in the floodplain.

were from residents and people asking about what uh to do next where's my permit type thing and these numbers are in addition to what the community development department reported from their system um this was strict from January to June of 2025 um there's been a lot of mention about the forerunner software uh that is a new system this is a screenshot of that system ideally residents have the ability to go and and and research their property in the floodplain if you go to the hurricane preparedness web page and and scroll down to the interactive map um you'll be able to access the public facing side of forerunner it's an information tool to be educated upon uh if your home is in the floodplain what level you're at elevation certificates are now starting to be programmed inside that system and it's also we've made really good progress um because we're now required to handle the substantial damage inspections ourselves we're working through that um to make it as efficient as possible especially when time is of essence in an emergency situation um in addition to providing the support we uh had inspections come in um we employed a laser level and we found um with the data that some of the uh assessment data was not valid so we were essentially cross checking the original data um we conducted 74 laser inspections in the community 63 detailed damage inspections these are like insurance adjuster reports where we go and we get the exact number of what it would cost what the damages were and a floor plan schematic those were important because at that time permitting required floor plans and every dollar that you would put into the house to fix the damages uh these reports were exactly that and could be used in permitting um we also had 26 no damage inspections that was a clear indicator of helping residents prove that there was no water inside their house pictures mayor you talked uh about uh golf port recovers when before the storm while we're in a blue sky day get the documentation needed because god forbid we have another storm event those pictures of what the property condition was before helped save some of these no damage inspections and it helped essentially prove the case that there was no damage to that property so um gtv uh my department also provides support as you know we broadcast the city council meetings live on Spectrum Cable channel 640 as well as online on the city's website um we have uh Jacob Taylor who's the cultural facility coordinator as well as an event staff member in the background here at City Hall indexing the meetings to help with on demand support after the fact so someone could go to that meeting on the city council web page click on the agenda the video the agenda item that takes you to the exact moment in time it helps save from having to scroll through the um the meeting it helps get there faster these are some statistics pulled them from January 1 of 25 through uh April 16th of 26 um and that's also a picture of what our archive looks like this was important um this shows how many uh total views took place um in the online version of uh each meeting um and I can tell you that top uh item is from the April 1st 2025 live event that's also when we had an additional meeting area set up outside um that was live views count as in when the meeting's taking place how many viewers are online watching the content um total there was 28000 plus views and uh over 9,000 unique users since January 1st now this is strict to just the Granicus platform the on-demand video service of the meetings as well as the um uh live events and with that um I'll be back for cultural facilities but I'd like to transition to the police department um thank you Dave you have any questions about us I don't have any questions I just wanted to say when we talk about how many of our employees wear so many hats um for those of you that were here following the storms you know that Justin jumped in and tried to save a whole lot of people with the uh substantial damage letters and unfortunately some people thought he was the bad guy they weren't quick to pick up that he was really the good guy trying to save them I think now in hindsight most people realize that so thank you Justin you didn't have any questions for them no I was giving him accolades all right I am Mary Farrand your police chief I actually brought a secret weapon she's here all right so we're gonna run through these really quick and then you can meet my secret weapon all right so for 2025 we had 5,750 dispatch calls for service as opposed to 17,109 officer initiated calls in 2025 our violent crime was down compared to 2024 and we made 202 arrests which involved 21 uses of force we had three retirements officer Michael Sigsby retired in March and went to work for code enforcement Sergeant Rob Burkhart retired in January of 2026

In 2025, our violent crime was down compared to 2024.

And we made 202 arrests, which involved 21 uses of force.

We had three retirements.

Officer Michael Sigsby retired in March and went to work for code enforcement.

Sergeant Rob Burkhart retired in January of 2026.

And Chief Rob Vincent retired in January of 2025.

Those retirements resulted in some promotions.

Sergeant David Jinovich was promoted to sergeant in January of 2026.

Jason Ma was promoted to sergeant in June of 2025.

Tom Woodman was promoted to captain in June of 2025.

And you got me in June of 2025.

We have two new school resource officers.

Austin Simpkins is at Gulfport Elementary.

And Arian Nieves is at Boca Siega High School.

And we hired two officers, three officers separated, as you can see.

And we had two internal investigations and one disciplinary action.

Also in 2025, we had 112 crashes, and we issued 639 citations.

Wait, you mean that we had 112 crashes among the police department or no?

Crashes.

Oh scared me there for a minute.

We're not great drivers.

Is that necessary?

One of the uh the one of my most proud things, I think, is the addition of a therapy canine.

Raya.

Raya.

Rhea Olivia Benson Crosen.

You all know who Olivia Benson is.

Yeah, yeah.

Um this is her handler.

Detective Jennifer Croson.

Okay.

Come on up here.

Act like you don't know.

This is the secret weapon.

Many people don't know that we have a therapy dog, so I thought it was important to highlight that.

Looking for treats.

She has to say hi to everybody.

She's looking at you working.

Yeah, she is working.

I know.

That's it for my presentation.

Do you have any questions?

All right.

Speaking order, any questions for the chief?

Sure, chief.

I have a question about the vehicle burglaries.

They were up by thirty almost 30%.

Yes, that was throughout the county, actually.

Okay.

Everybody was affected.

Oh, this is Gulfport numbers, but these are our numbers, but throughout the county, they were high.

Was it from vehicles being left unlocked, or was it from people and or was it from people breaking a window and hot wiring the car?

Mostly column A, I believe.

Vehicles being left unlocked.

Okay.

Thank you.

No questions about Raya?

I I do have a question about Rhea.

Is she um support for victims?

For you all, for everyone.

Good.

Okay.

So we are a certified therapy dog team, so she can go anywhere.

Okay.

We go to the communications center.

We'll go anywhere that needs our services.

Yeah.

She's star really.

I know that Chief Fernandez is also trying, is also gonna get a dog, and that part of that is for the employees as well, right?

With the jobs that you do.

So thank you, thank you.

We were first.

Of course, of course.

No one's a different.

And our dog, our dog is available for the fire department too.

We'll see during the guns and roses tournament.

But she would love a friend.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

Um, I'm Fire Chief Renee Fernandez, the fire chief for our city of Gulfport Fire Department.

Uh we currently have 20 firefighters in our department.

Um, with those 20 firefighters, we have a ALS engine and a rescue that we run 24-7.

Aside from that, we also have specialty units that are ready to go anytime we need them.

And that is our Marine unit, Marine 17, our special rescue that we use for our special events.

Uh, we also use that for if we get calls in the beaches, we're able to access it a lot easier and get down on the water with it as it's uh four by four.

Uh we also have a storm unit that we just put in service that I'm gonna talk about in a little bit, and that's for floods and stuff in the future, which we didn't have before.

Um to the next slide, or which is our only slide with data.

It's um total number of EMS and fire responses were 3,773.

Um we're actually in Pinellas County for our fire station.

Uh, we're actually one of the busier ones up there in the whole county for an actual station.

Of course, bigger departments combined are gonna have more calls, but for one single station, um we're we're one of the busiest.

Um what a lot of people don't know is that we only don't respond to calls in golf port.

Pinellas County for EMS uses uh GPS system and it automatically dispatches the closest unit.

So it does not matter if it's St.

Pete, if it's in Pasadena, Pasadena's out on a call, it'll automatically send us there.

Uh we get a lot of times residents ask why is Pasadena here, why St.

Pete here?

That's because if we're on a call, it's gonna automatically dispatch the closest unit.

Um, this the system is so so accurate that if a call comes in, let's say at Golfport Beach and our rescue's out on golf port boulevard, it'll pull our engine that's at our station because it's closer by by that's how accurate the system is.

A lot of times too, coming back from the hospital.

If you if you're coming back from the hospital, you may get pulled to a call that's even farther out from our net from our area.

Um but that's an agreement we have with all the departments in our in our county.

Out of those 3,773 calls that we ran, uh, 26 of those were cardiac arrests, 171 were motor vehicle collisions, 101 structure fires, 130 fire alarms, and uh 57 marine water rescue responses and 29 trauma alerts.

Uh on our fire prevention side, we had over 245 fire inspections, and that doesn't include our plan reviews or certificate certificate of occupancies.

Um our numbers were down a little due to a lot of businesses not being open due to the storm, uh, but we normally have more than that on the fire prevention side.

Uh one of our biggest accomplishments for the year was we placed our new engine in service.

Uh we had a little ceremony for it at our station.

A lot of you attended, um, and that was a fire truck that we had ordered over almost three years.

It took us to get it.

Uh this year we will be receiving our rescue, our new rescue, hopefully in July, it's looking like, and we'll be putting that in service as well.

So now we'll have a backup unit because what happens is when our current rescues out of service, we have to barrow one from a neighboring department.

So now that one will be our backup, and we'll have our new one in service in July.

And that is a fully refunded by the the county uh supplements us for that rescue.

Um we also have a smoke detector program in our in our department.

So if anybody needs smoke detectors, all they have to do is call our station and we'll offer them a smoke detector.

If it's older couple or people that don't know how to install them themselves, we'll actually come out to your house to install them.

Um this past year we installed over we installed an estimated 64 smoke detectors in our golf port, and that is for city of golf port residences.

Um we continue to provide public education as a training center.

Uh we're we're a training center for the American Heart Association, so we offer not only CPR classes, we also offer first aid classes.

Uh Jim Wright, who's our volunteer coordinator, he's a big help with that.

Uh he assists with a lot of the instruction for that.

Uh but we only don't do it for uh local citizens.

We also do it for for Stetson Law College.

Uh we just did a big class for Pasadena Yacht and Country Club for their cruising fleet.

So we try to get out in the community as much as we can and teach these classes.

Uh our department continues to be proactive role in conjunction with Pinellas County, providing services through the comprehensive opius stimulated and substance abuse program.

So ever since that program was put into place with Pinolas County, we've seen a huge decrease in the amount of overdoses that we respond to.

I can say uh for a fact that a three years ago we were just our station alone was running, I would say at least one one a week, maybe one every every 10 days.

Uh we don't we barely run on them at this time, and um which is a good thing.

So uh we keep track of that, how much Narcan we've we've given patients and all of that, and I could tell you we've we've decreased by at least 50 percent the amount of Narcan that we're giving out in the community.

So that's a positive thing.

Uh the next thing on the slide is our John boat.

So the John boat, we put it in place.

Uh it's ready to go for any future storms that we get.

Uh, because one things that we learned during the storm, once it floods, you can't get down there.

So we wanted something for our crews to be safer, be able to access down there and be able to assist citizens safely in case of floods.

Because but if you if you do get evacuation orders, please evacuate.

So it keeps our guys safer and keeps you guys safer as well.

Um to go along with that to be able to run those John boats during storms, you have to be certified in Swift Water.

So we currently have three department members that are currently getting uh certified as a swift boat operator, and then we have six department members that are attending, three are attending a class in September, and three are attending a class in October.

So we're gonna have six department members that are gonna be fully certified for those type of to work in those types of conditions.

So another accomplishment that we did this last year, which is new, uh, are that we we became partners with the safe kid coalitions.

Uh that's a program through all children's, and uh we we we were able to install, we have three certified technicians to be able to install car seats.

The reason we did that is we used to get a lot of people that would come to the station and they'll say, Hey, are you could you install a car seat?

You have to be certified for that.

We didn't have that before, so we wanted to do something for the community to help out more.

So we got three guys certified.

We try to keep one person on each ship.

So anytime someone comes, we'll install car seat for them.

This past year we had 10 to 12 car seats, which doesn't sound like a lot, but it's a start for us uh for us.

So uh we also do give out um life jackets to kids and adults, that's part of the program as well.

So we have a huge stash of them.

So if anybody in the community needs a life jacket, feel free to come by our fire station.

We have every size from kids to adults, so um, that's part of the program as well.

Uh next slide, there's just a couple pictures.

So that top corner is our new fire truck that we put in service in July.

Uh we we made the colors match the the old 1925 that we have at our station.

Um, and we're continuing that our new rescue is gonna have that same scheme as well.

Uh the on the right is our marine unit, and then in the bottom, you got a couple pictures of training.

So training's a big part of our job.

We're required to do 220 hours of just fire training per year for every individual, and you have the calendar year to complete that.

Our department's normally done by September.

So I would say we each we we easily do about 300 hours of training, um, and that's just on the fire side, not including medical side of it, and that's for each department member.

Um we also do a lot of community uh community events, as you can see.

That's a firefighter at water in the bottom at one of our events.

We don't only do the local community events, we have people that'll call us and say, Hey, my kids having a party.

Do you mind swinging by in the fire truck?

You know, for the partner, and we do, we do, but we let them know hey, we're gonna be an available status, so if we get a call, we have to go.

So we we do a lot of stuff like that in the community.

So we try to get involved as much as we can out there, and uh most of the time it works out good.

So but that's all I got.

Anyone have any questions?

Good.

Any questions for the chief?

No, any on this side.

No, thank you.

All right, so is it true?

I heard that y'all were on the uh USF fire.

Yep, we were we were there for a long time.

So yeah, it was pretty.

We we actually helped uh when we got there.

I I wasn't there personally, but the crew that was working uh when they got there, they had them pulling out the the tanks, the nitrogen tanks that were in the in the structure.

So they assisted with funding them all out of there to prevent it from getting worse.

So very good.

Yep.

Thank you so much.

No problem.

Yeah, of course.

Somebody else was gonna call it in about 15.

No.

Hi, hi, Rachel Catado.

Um, I am the senior center supervisor and the gym's transportation supervisor.

And all right, so um, and so I'm sure everybody knows that after the after the storms, our numbers did drop.

Um, I believe that is because of people not coming, maybe our snowbird uh residents not coming back and not having a space to be.

Our numbers did drop a little bit.

Um however, we when that happened, we did become very focused on our services.

Uh we we upped our reassurance calls.

Um, we really focused on the durable medical equipment uh lending program that we have.

That has taken off quite a bit.

Um in the past few years, we would maybe give out a couple of pieces of equipment.

What that is is um people bring us wheelchairs, walkers, canes that they no longer need, uh knee scooters, you name it.

Um, and we just put it in the shed, and then no joke, as soon as we get one, somebody comes and calls and says, Hey, my mom's coming to visit, and I don't have this here.

Can we borrow something?

And so we just we guess keep it going, give it to people that need it.

Um so that's been taken off a lot lately.

And there's that.

I will say um that we are now back up to the numbers that we were seeing pre-year pre before the hurricane.

Um so we are almost back to well, we are about 500 people a day.

Um coming to see about whatever we've got 80 activities a week, um, 200 different unique activities in the year.

Then for gyms.

So what what did happen um different than the senior center where our numbers decreased, our gym's transportation numbers increased, our ridership increased.

Uh we we take people to um medical food, nutritional, employment, and other life-sustaining activities.

So we did 11,250 rides.

We do about three different day trips um a month, and we get it like we go all sorts of different places, and people love it because they don't have to worry about buying a ticket, they don't have to worry about um parking, driving, all of that.

They just get on the bus and go.

And I will say, I'm very happy to say that we received also just recently got through all the process, um, two new vehicles.

So those two new new vehicles, that's through a FDOT grant where the city only pays 10% of that vehicle's cost.

Um, so we just got two of our older vehicles replaced with these two new new vehicles.

So we have two cutaway minibuses and two of the um the transport uh what is that a transit, it's a Ford Transit van.

Um, all four of them being ADA wheelchair accessible.

Um along with all that, we also working with the senior advisory committee.

Um I we got the Discover Gulfport walking trail up and running.

Um that's all that's all good.

We can get uh working with the senior advisory committee, and then with the foundation um supporting our monthly the cost of our monthly newsletter.

Um I know that doesn't it's not a big deal, it was a big deal for me because we went from a four-page newsletter to an eight-page newsletter where it's actually a size oh that people can read.

That was that was very important.

Um so that's what we've done.

Thank you, Rachel.

Thank you.

Thank you, Rachel.

Good evening, Council.

I'm the marina director, Dennis Fray, slash harbormaster.

The marina, as you know, is an enterprise fund or one of many enterprises fund in the city.

Uh the current infrastructure includes 187 wet slips, eight boat lifts, and 30 a 300-foot transient dock in the north basin.

The south basin consists of 36 wet slips and 20 boat lifts in the south basin, which is currently uh under uh design, or actually, we just went out to bid for it.

So we did receive the bids today, and we hope to get to the project done pretty soon.

Um the in addition, the marine provides 51 um trailered uh vessels, 30 canoe and kayak racks, and 20 offshore moorings.

I want to put a little disclaimer on these numbers because we did were closed down most of the year, um, and of course you know last year because of the hurricane.

Um but the marina fueling facility continues to be a major revenue source for the marina.

Uh the transient dock reservations remain steady and it are very popular among out-of-state boaters and local boaters alike.

Mooring field reservations offer flexible alternative with both daily and monthly vessel rentals.

The municipal boat ramp continues to serve as a valid access point for trailered vessels.

Um we have been getting popular since a hurricane because a lot of boat ramps in Pinellas County have been damaged, and they still aren't up and running.

Uh Fort DeSoto has no docks, and neither does Bay Pine.

So we are experiencing influx of trailers and boats that we normally don't see.

So hopefully, when these facilities get back open, then we'll probably hopefully slow down to our normal traffic.

Um the marina also maintains a which I'm proud of maintains a designated uh clean marina.

It's certified by the Florida DEP since the year 2000.

I was a part of that, and we're with approximately 35,000 gallons of sewage pumped annually.

And this is from the mooring field and our two local um pump out stations right at the marina.

So we have two at our fuel dock, and then we have one in the south basin.

So all the vessels have pump out at each slip.

So they can pump out during you know business hours, but they do the pump outs, and there's a hose on each dock.

So there's no excuse for not to pump out your your vessel.

This is a live and shoreline, which uh the mayor had touched upon, is currently with the FDEP.

Uh the project includes installation of oyster domes, oyster bags, and native vegetation to improve shoreline resiliency and environmental conditions.

Okay, this is the mooring field.

The mooring field project was approved by the city of Gulfport on April 21st.

The CGREFs is scheduled.

The sea grass study is scheduled for June with a boundary line survey studied to follow shortly after that.

Once we get them the uh surveys back and the seagrass study, then we'll move to the next phase of the mooring field, which would be the permitting and um the final design and the construction, most likely next fiscal year.

This work will support environmentally responsible expansion and management of the mooring fields infrastructure.

The marina is open 365 days a year.

We are only closed on Christmas and New York, New Year's.

I mean Christmas and Thanksgiving, excuse me.

Um we employ seven employees, four which are um full time, and three which is part-time.

The marina wouldn't wouldn't be if we didn't have our terrific staff backing me to make all these uh, you know, everything that we do down there uh very possible.

So I really do want to thank my staff.

They've been great all year long, especially during the hurricane.

Um we did a lot of in-house um infrastructure repairs ourselves, including some of the electricity that didn't involve a contractor.

Um we fixed our own pump out system ourselves and some of the plumbing.

Um we did rely on outside or the other city services like Kendrick's um uh department and Tim Connor department.

So we all really work together to get the marina up and run and as fast as we can.

Yes, we do have some projects to um be completed, like also the South Basin and the casino dock.

Um, but with that out to bed, I hope to start them projects pretty soon.

That's all I guess.

Any questions?

I have just one on the South Basin that just seems like such a huge project.

How long would that take once it gets started?

Do you expect?

The the contractor has has 180 days to complete the project.

Six months.

So we could see that at the end of the year.

Yes.

Um hopefully we don't have any hurricanes or inclement weather to for that to happen.

So I remember when we built that dock back in 1995, um, it was shortly built, and we had a hurricane right after that, and it turned the whole docks into a big roller coaster ride.

So I hope we don't see that again.

Okay.

All right.

I did have a question.

Sorry.

Go ahead.

Um what is this blue?

This line on this page, there's like a couple of different lines on here.

What is that?

Um that could be our uh jurisdiction line or um I'm not quite sure what that is.

That came for the survey, so I I would have to know it.

It might be our boundary line, but I'm not sure.

It's a topographical topicographical study.

Oh, okay.

It's a depth of the water.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So what I'm gonna do now is I see a lot of people squirming, and I understand.

Okay.

So it is 8.09.

I was hoping we're gonna get through all this because I'm fascinated by every bit of it, but I feel like we're gonna stop and take a 10-minute break so people can get in and use the restroom, stretch your legs, whatever.

So we will resume at 8 19.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Can everybody have their seat, please?

Thank you.

It was unfortunate that we had to break in the middle of this information because I do think everybody's enjoying it.

But I could see the squirming.

So it's Gulfport Public Library.

If you include digital.

And the number of attendees is about ten thousand on that time period.

So these are the this is the breakdown.

We had in-person adults two fifty, children two fifty-six, teen sixty-one.

All ages is small.

All ages is actually something we report for the state, but really our adult programs are mainly all ages too, so we just can't include them in that statistic.

So we do have the old that's why that's small, just so you know.

But the uh, and then we have some take-home and outreach kits.

These this was kind of born out of 2020 when we couldn't have anybody really in the building.

Uh, we still do some of them because uh some of the kits, especially for children were widely popular.

Uh and here's the program attendance again.

Again, we've got uh 10,000, the breakdown is children, about 6,000, adults uh around 3,300.

Teens has gone up significantly in the last year, and that's uh 729.

Uh, and then the all ages uh again is about 94 people at those three programs.

Uh this is how many.

So how we get this arrive at the statistics uh for uh the stats for um uh questions answered, reference questions answered.

Um and this is uh this is how the numbers calculated, but you can do this through the state.

Uh this is for our state statistics.

What we do is we keep a log of how many uh reference questions we have for about a week at every uh uh at every station, and then we add them up.

Uh we do that uh quarterly, um, and then we kind of do some calculations, and so uh it's about seven, and actually that number might be low because technically we're supposed to use every single question asked, including where's the bathroom, where's city hall?

That is all included in the state stats, but um obviously we don't tick things like that sometimes.

Um then these are some of the digital content that I was talking about.

Uh these are all things that are provided at no cost, as long, of course, as you have a library card, you can get into these.

Uh, some of them, like pronunciator, you can learn a language.

Uh hoopla, you can get uh you can get free ebooks, you can get free audiobooks, um Libby is the same way.

Canopy is basically uh like Netflix, but it's free if you have a library card.

We have legal forms available.

Uh that number may look low, 158, but these are things where people come in for specific.

Uh, there's a lot of people that come in and say, Oh, I I need a legal form, but it's not really for that, it's for people that need specific legal forms for maybe a draft or something like that.

Some people do use it for the actual legal use, but um, that's what that is, and they're all updated constantly online.

Then we have the A to Z database and some others.

And uh, like Dennis, I just wanted to say that um my staff is incredible.

Um, they really go the extra mile.

Um, you really have a staff.

The the city really has a staff that is really dedicated to that library, they love that library, uh, and they do all sorts of programming, they're constantly thinking about new programming.

I think we have a a book club now for every genre, and it's not just the reference librarian, it's like some of our other employees get involved in that.

So I think that's a really special group of people there.

Um history museum.

Oh, wait, that's me too.

So history museum.

Um in 2023, uh, the city took over the day-to-day services of the history museum and the arts center, uh, and now they're in one department.

Um, and so these are some of the statistics from your history museum.

Uh Gulf Port History Museum.

Um, it's staffed by two people, one full-time, one part-time.

They had a 528 visitors that did like walk through during open hours.

Um, they all they helped host with um the arts and heritage group.

Um the uh the 14 porch parties and 11 walking tours, and and they had 620 attendants there.

And I like to say that that's a really good partnership there.

They really um get some quality program for us, and then we kind of work with them to get the actual people there, um, like the the workers there.

Um, and so some of the collaborations, the community projects were with the Arts Center, um, Gulf Port Arts and Heritage, like I just mentioned, Gulfport Library, Eckert College, Gulf Scholar Program, Florida Humanities, Merchant Chamber, uh, and the Auxiliary.

Um, and then so some of the projects we've achieved so far, and this is from 2025 on was uh we've done digitizing of 20 over 21,000, about 22,000 uh historical documents.

They've scanned for like about 2,600 house-related documents.

They've cataloged about 1,100, digitized about a thousand oral histories.

Approximately 2,000 items inventoried and 458 minutes of VHS tape because the library up in Clearwater will do free digitization for our museum.

So we partnered with them to do that.

And just in case you didn't know, they will do research for you.

So if you have a house you think is historical and you get historic and you give them an address, they will look up everything they have about your house and they will let you know what they have.

Also, all this is available, all the stuff I'm talking about is available online on the website.

If you go to Gulfport, my golfort.us, and then go to the history museum.

You can look up all this data for yourself too, but then anything that's not digitized, they'll be happy to look for.

If you give them a call, you can set up an appointment to uh talk to them about any kind of research that you may have.

And here's some of the pictures they sent me of some of the stuff they did.

There's a postcard from 1936.

There's some photographs, 34 to 79, and uh mid to late 1920s uh photograph too.

And uh it's funny because sometimes I will text uh Jim a picture and say, Who are these people?

And of course he usually knows who they are.

Um so that's the History Museum, and now the Public Arts Center.

So Public Arts Center.

Uh for those of you who don't know, there is a staff there, one full-time again and one part-time, and they do a ton of programs for the citizens.

They do uh they've welcomed over 1,700 visitors in that same time period, uh, 121 art workshops, and they've uh done five community focused art shows with a hundred pieces of art.

Um, and then some of the equipment and techniques they use is here.

I won't list them all, but you can see it's like watercolors, uh, gesture draw drawing, um I don't know what some of the stuff is, I'll be honest with you.

Journal making, that's why uh I I love working with the museum and the art center, but they really know their art, and I'm I'm just an amateur with this part.

Um, and then coming soon, of course, we have pottery and a kiln and some wheels, but that's just gonna be like basic.

It's not gonna be like advanced pottery.

Um, it's just gonna be some basic stuff, especially for children and anybody who just wants to get started.

Um, and then here's some pictures of some of the programs they did.

Again, we do a lot with the children.

And uh now it's the recenter.

Wow, that's a lot.

Hi, mayor, council, city manager.

So I'm gonna start off.

I'm uh not gonna have probably much to say since we were closed for six months in January.

Um, but we have um the recreation center, we offer programs for children, and uh which is a preschool program and a VPK program.

We have an after-school program, uh, we have a teen night program, and we have a summer program.

Now, during um when we were closed during that time um after the hurricane, we were able to still run our preschool and VPK program and our after-school program out of the um Scout Hall.

Out of Scout Hall.

Unfortunately, we couldn't do any of our classes just because we didn't have the availability, and plus with licensing and things like that, we couldn't have some of the stuff there that um you know, for the children not to be able to be around.

So, but uh fortunately we were able to um continue those programs.

Um we did lose some of our classes that we offer for youth and adults just because during that time people did go somewhere else and find different locations, but we are working back to get those um programs back into our facility.

Um so some of our uh activities in classes that we offer is we have adult basketball.

Oops, sorry.

Um we have adult basketball, and that has picked up tremendously.

Um at our center, we have probably about um 20 plus.

Um there are mainly um adult men that come out and play basketball.

Um so that's uh gone well for us.

We have ballet and tap for children, we have cardio tennis for adult, uh, fitness uh tennis for adult.

We have hip hop uh for children, we had jujitsu, we have table tennis, and we have Zumba.

So those are um the activities and classes that we have.

Besides, we have open game room, we have uh Pickleball, um that's also offered.

Big events that we are responsible for is our Arbor Day celebration, our Fun in the Sun, which is our big Easter event.

We have our July 4th celebration, our Halloween Bash was also another big event.

And then we have our holiday tree lighting.

And then we rent out Hoyt Field that can utilize for practices or even leagues.

Now we will have our volleyball coming back.

We do have a partnership with Tampa Bay Club Sports that we have leagues, and they will be playing out there Monday, Tuesdays, and Thursdays.

And then we also have now our pavilions are up and running.

And I think just today, I think I had five new more rentals just that uh came to reserve today.

So the pavilions are now a big hit for rentals.

So which is was one of our biggest things prior to the storm is our pavilion rentals.

So that is coming back again.

So we are happy uh for that to happen.

So that's what I have.

But yes.

And we're getting very uh getting uh ready for our summer program that will start on uh June 1st.

So we'll be uh having that for 10 weeks for our children completed kindergarten through age 14.

So I don't think you introduced yourself, and I think there's some people that might not know.

I'm sorry, Mayor Volgateras recreation supervisor, and I have uh four full-time staff and uh seven uh part-time staff that work uh with me, and I can't, as everyone else had said, is you can't say um you know thank you enough to the staff, um, especially during the hurricane.

Um I went through damage at my own home.

So if it wasn't for my staff that had stepped in to take responsibility and take over while I was dealing with my own, they've been fabulous.

So, and I'm happy to say that I've had some of my staff for over 16 um years that I've had them with me.

So I'm very happy on that.

So, yes.

Thank you very much.

And passing on to Justin.

Uh, just for the record, I am the ping pong champion of the rec center in 2007 and 2008.

Thank you, Mirabo.

Um, cultural facilities events, casino theater, 49th Street Scout Hall.

Wanted to give you the big picture, the overview of the casino operation, half a million dollar program.

This is revenue generated by the weekly dances, the uh cultural facilities rent their casino rentals, excuse me, and also the casino bar operation.

You can see COVID put a dent in our uh revenue stream, and then of course, with the storms, um, we'll see no revenue uh 25-26.

Um, we are um hoping to open late 27, um, but we're about 60% complete with the plans.

Once we have those plans, we go out the bid, find the contractor.

We know we're 12 months after that bid is awarded, and then six months into that construction, we'll start the process to get the weekly dances back online in the community call to host a reopening at the historic Gulf Port Casino.

Um, Catherine Hickman Theater ran these numbers from January 1st of 2025.

Um we hosted 141 events at the Catherine Hickman.

Um we also in rental um we have three categories rentals, revenue, bar revenue.

Um we generated six about sixty-five thousand dollars of uh revenue at just theater um operations.

Um I also added that we had five over five thousand unique views on the Catherine Hickman Theatre's uh calendar of events.

So if you go to the recreation page for the theater, you can see a list of upcoming events and contact information too for who's hosting the event.

49th Street Neighborhood Center.

I wanted to list the community partners that we work with at this facility, uh, Fusion 49, Gulfport Police Trainings, Public Works.

We hosted the Plant the Tree, the Kiwanis Club, Sun Coast League of Cities, etc.

Uh, these are community-based organizations that provide a local impact and with the support of the city manager and the U City Council, we're able to uh provide a community space for the local-based organizations.

Also just wanted to show what the revenue numbers look like for rentals.

This building's also available if you want to host a birthday party.

Uh we've hosted baby showers.

So it's available to rent from the cultural facilities office.

With the casino closed, our operation works from Gulfport Scout Hall.

I can't thank enough how much staff does to sustain the operation.

For example, with us helping other departments.

Tammy, who works the front office, she is the most organized paper person that I have ever seen.

That she is so organized, she's inspirational.

Kristen in marketing, Jacob in uh coordination.

Um, City Council approved over 60 events uh for fiscal year 26.

I put a little collage together to show that impact.

Um, and and most importantly, uh if the day gets stressful, ultimately going to an event and standing there, meeting the community, talking to people is what it's all about.

Um, also wanted to add that the Gulfport Looper, this is a transportation service that we provide for first Fridays, second Saturdays, and also third Saturday events and large scale major events.

Um we will be operating this Saturday for the second Saturday Fusion 49 event at Trolley Market Square.

Wanted to um also update the looper ridership numbers.

Um we have seen an increase in the number of riders, but I also believe because we've digitized our inspection forms prior to October of 25.

Um, we were tracking paper and drivers were submitting reports via a piece of paper to the cultural facilities office.

Now we've digitized with the help of IT the inspection forms so the drivers can do their inspections, they scan a QR code, it takes them to the formulator, and they literally plug their information on that form in the background.

It populates a database.

Um I also wanted to show you uh that we've worked with the Pinella Suncoast Transit Authority.

Um we put little tiny triangles at the Gulfport Casino in 30th and Beach Boulevard trolley stops because we had to follow unique criteria that PSTA told us we had to follow in order to get on their polls.

But I wanted to show an example of what that looked like on uh the presentation.

Um, in addition, with the completion of the town shores uh seawall project, um this picture was taken on the day of Fun in the Sun.

Just wanted to show you that we do have a stop on 59th Street inside town shores, and we also uh loop around to the clubhouse area to pick people up.

Um, and we want you to be able to use this service.

Um, we want everybody to use this service, and we want to be able to uh transport you to the event.

And with the opening of 58th Street, we are now able to go northbound all the way up to 15th, and then our marina drive, we kind of play that by ear.

It depends on the number of overflow, if you will, to that off-site parking location, but usually by nighttime uh we discontinue the marina drives.

And with that, um I am open to any questions.

Thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Wow.

That's all I can say is wow.

I also want to make everybody aware that our department heads, they did not get to do this last year.

They were too busy trying to manage crisis.

Uh that they did not have an opportunity to come up here and talk about uh what their departments do and the successes that they have.

So I'm just really pleased that they had that opportunity tonight.

And before we move to public comment, I also have to acknowledge for those of you that were sitting you oh you have one.

I'm so sorry.

I'm so glad that I got read the hand signals.

Never mind.

Very, very thankful.

Um, because this was all about high, thank you, Mayor and Council members for entertaining last few slides here.

Uh because this is all about our employees, and I am the office of the city clerk, and I hold the city clerk position.

I wanted to come here tonight because we are not part of the departments, we don't have all of those operational things for you.

Um, but I do want to highlight my deputy city clerk.

We don't get to highlight her as much as we should because myself and her are the only two employees within the city that do not fall under Mr.

O'Reilly's charge.

Uh so we are the office of the city clerk, so that makes up myself, Teresa Carico.

I am your city clerk, and this is your deputy city clerk, Amanda Hartman.

Um, very quickly, I'm just gonna give you a quick slide on what my biggest accomplishment was this year, and then we're gonna move on to really what Amanda has done and my department.

Uh so my biggest accomplishment this year was or in 2025 was that I did become certified as a certified municipal clerk, which is a CMC designation.

So my biggest accomplishment this year was, or in 2025, was that I did become certified as a certified municipal clerk, which is a CMC designation.

So to become a city clerk, it's a pretty rigorous process.

Excuse me, I'm a little bit nervous.

So you have to do that for two years.

You must enroll in the CMC program, which means that they're gonna do a background check on you.

They're gonna make sure that your ethics are completely sound and that you are worthy of holding the city clerk title.

After that, you're able to start going to your classes, and you may and we have to get a total of 110 requirement points, and points are not ours.

Points are usually awarded for every one point for every two hours of class time that you do.

So this does take a little bit of time.

We're required to have 60 points in our education and 50 points for our experience.

Experience can be how many years you've worked in the city clerk field if you've done something before that.

So what I've shown you up here is that I did meet my 60 points in in my education requirements, so many so that they carried over into my experience points.

What they did consider from my experience is uh before coming here to the city of Gulfport, many people do not understand that I worked for a local credit union as a manager for 19 years.

So I was able to have them give me a letter of support and show my HR history, and that was uh credited points for me.

Uh so after that, then you have to submit the application, which is quite a rigorous process as well.

Every single item that you submit has to be met with backup documentation.

So I can't just say I worked for Achieve a Credit Union, they wanted to see my history.

Uh so I had to gather all of that, enter it in, and as of the 25th of August, I did receive my certified municipal clerk designation.

Um that is an accredited certification through the John Scott Daily Institute of Government, which is held at the Florida State University.

Enough about me.

Uh, we're gonna move on to Miss Hartman.

So Ms.

Hartman is a clerk in her own right.

Uh just because she sits outside of my office.

Many people think that she is my secretary or that she is my admin assistant.

She is not.

She is just a godsend.

That helps me with everything.

So without her, this office would be impossible to run.

Uh, right now I do have her on an education path because I do believe education is incredibly important within the clerk's office.

We have to stay up on the legislation, we have to stay up on the laws.

Uh, we also have to do all of your filing of your ordinances and everything with the state.

So I have her on a track to hopefully become a CMC as well.

By 2028, is your goal?

Okay.

Um, so right now she has started that by by attending webinars when she can.

Um, she has a completed five webinars.

She has completed cybersecurity awareness for the state of Florida.

She's completed First Amendment audits and citizen journalist journalist response for our class on that.

And of course, every year we must take a four-hour ethics training.

Right now, she has completed one fall academy with the Florida Association of City Clerks.

She is scheduled to do her summer academy, I believe, this coming June.

Uh, she also is about to be certified as a Florida records, Florida Certified Records Manager.

Thank you.

Uh so while she while I was working on my certification for CMC, I put her on the track for the Florida Records Management because once again, in this office of the city clerk, I wear two hats.

I'm also your records custodian, which means I'm responsible for reporting to the state, all of the records that we have that we destroy, what our retention schedules are.

So that is another area that I work in.

So she's gonna become a Florida records management certification.

Uh she'll be attending the summer and fall academies, and like we said, we were hoping to get her certified by the 2028.

She had a huge operational impact on my department this year.

Uh, as I was dealing with new councils and onboarding and things like that, as my primary duties do sit with the five of you.

Uh that's where she comes in.

So she actually worked on a very large-scale project for me, scanning in 11,460 files that she digitized since January of 2025.

She did not do this alone.

We were blessed to be able to utilize any employees within the city that were displaced from the storm.

Maybe their office wasn't open yet.

Any officers that are on light duty, firemen or police.

So anytime I can take somebody into my office to help them get through whatever they're they need to, I will put them and sit them scanning.

So when you come in and you see that strange person sitting there in front of my office, that's what they're doing.

All right.

Now very quickly on to what the numbers look like for our department.

And please keep in mind that the office of the city clerk only employs two people.

So we have onboarded six city council members.

We've onboarded six Board of Adjustment members.

My eyes are very bad, so she's going to help me.

Four planning and zoning members.

And I have uh maintained 11 candidates' qualifications during that time.

Meetings and engagement between the two of us.

We have attended 40 city council meetings, nine city council workshops, 10 Board of Adjustments meetings, three planning and zoning meetings, 11 charter review meetings, and we have just as last week organized and completed one teen mock council meeting.

Thank you, Councilmember Shaw.

That was fun.

As far as our agendas, uh 33 agendas created for city council, eight for council workshops, ten for board of adjustments, planning and zoning, 10 charter review, 10 special magistrate, five historical preservations, five site plan reviews.

And these are just the meetings that are actually open to the public or that a clerk has to be present to take minutes.

We also attend several meetings throughout the week for other items.

And then of course, our legislative and administrative is I have successfully codified up to 14 ordinances, 139 resolutions and six proclamations, which these numbers have changed because we did one tonight and there's things on there.

One of the biggest things that we do in our office when you see us walking back and forth between here and the front desk is we're notarizing things for our citizens.

So if the citizens need anything notarized, um generally we will only do it for a city of Gulfport document.

Um I've been a notary for over 30 years, so I'm comfortable doing things.

So you may come to me and ask, and I may turn it away or I may be able to take it.

It depends on what I have going on.

Um so it's impossible for me to track those notarizations.

That's something that we do on such a regular basis.

And of course, the questions that we answer are endless.

We are constantly answering questions, not only for the council, but for the residents and for other staff.

We support the other departments by um getting them the records they need to move on with their day.

We may we also support the meetings where by going in taking minutes or just assisting wherever we can.

Uh we are of the mindset that we will help anybody at any time.

We love the city and we want it to succeed.

We want all of you to succeed.

That is, oh, public records.

I'm sorry.

That one has its own slide because it is another thing that we do, and it is a huge one.

Uh so since the beginning of 2025, we have completed over a thousand 17 public records just in the just for the city portion, in case anybody is not aware.

We have three different types of public records.

We have our police department, our city records, and then we have our fire department.

Police departments have their own records custodian, and they do all of their own public records.

They're within my portal, I can manage them if needed, but I don't have access to the police records.

So they have their own records custodian who handles those.

Um I do handle the fire records.

There's they're very minimal that come in, and so we decided that it would just be easier for my office to handle them and dish them out to the fire department.

They fulfill them, but I'm the one that's talking to the residents for them.

So as a chart, here we are, uh, almost 1,270 some public records managed by the two of us.

Um also our disposition list.

Uh, like I said, I manage the records management.

Uh so every year we have to go through our records.

We have a records uh retention schedule, and we have to make sure that the records meet that schedule before we can destroy them.

And then when I destroy them, I have to tell the state of Florida exactly what I'm destroying.

Um, so our total disposal disposal for 2025.

I have equal signs here, but I don't think I meant to have those.

We destroyed 131.85 cubic feet of documents.

Uh we destroyed 160.62 megabytes of digital information.

Uh we destroyed 21 discs that we found in the closet that had met the retention, uh, 11 tapes, and right now I'm still sitting on 30 cassette tapes that I have to get rid of, but they have not met the retention.

And everything's fine.

We're good.

We do this with a smile.

We're happy to do it.

Can I answer any questions for you?

Thank you.

Any questions, anybody?

Yeah.

Okay, thank you.

We have more paperwork up here today than I've ever had up here.

And that's why I didn't even realize that they had a segment because it wasn't part of the rest.

So before I, you know, recognize the hand signals out there, what I was trying to say was that it's not lost on me.

The number of department heads that came up here and gave credit to their staff.

I mean, I hope everybody heard that the way I heard that.

And to me, I attribute that to leadership.

To me, when you have department heads who are bragging on their staff, that to me all comes right back to our city manager.

He's the one that sets the tone that we saw in here today.

So I say thank you to him.

Thank you.

All righty.

With that in mind, the long-awaited public comment.

If anybody would like to make public comment, please raise your hand.

I'm gonna ask that you give your name as well as your address, and then we'll proceed.

So, Brad, I saw you first, and then you'll be second.

Good evening, or is it morning?

I don't know, not sure.

Um I'm Brad Bruner from the 2600 block of Beach Boulevard South, and I'm here to talk about something completely different.

I'm here to talk about the uniquely beautiful and deeply connected thing we have here in Gulfport, our peacock population.

They found their way here just like so many of us did.

Gulfport is an arts community, one that values creativity, individuality, spiritual enrichment.

We celebrate color, expression, the unexpected.

In many ways, peacocks embody those same values.

They aren't just ornamental, they bring a sense of wonder, a sense of nature, a connection to nature that reflects who we are as a city.

I'm fortunate to live in the area where many of these birds nest, and several close neighbors and I are here tonight in support of them.

We feel lucky to share our space with such remarkable creatures.

It's important that many cultures view them as a symbol of protection.

P fowl act as natural watchdogs, actually.

They roost high in our oaks and they sound loud calls when something is amiss.

They alert us to potential threats.

They also eat insects, small rodents, even snakes, contributing in a real way to natural pest control.

They're not just beautiful, they're beneficial.

I'd also like to address a few misconceptions I've heard.

These birds are not aggressive by nature.

In my daily experience, they coexist peacefully with us.

We're their neighbors.

It's also not accurate that peacocks live 50 years, or could it do that here?

Many live closer to 10, if really lucky, they might go to 20, especially in the wild conditions we have here because we have all the elements, the traffic, other risks.

And while, and they don't reproduce in a huge numbers, it's way more modest than what you might have heard.

Uh what happens is many chicks don't even survive.

I mean, nature keeps things in balance.

What we have here is not an uncontrolled problem.

It's more of a self-regulating, naturally balancing population.

And there are many large inclusive jurisdictions like a Miami-Dade County that have actually given peacocks total protected status.

And in any case, Florida has anti-cruelty laws that protect peacocks, meaning we cannot just hunt, kill, molest, or do other things that people mentioned previously to them.

And in order to move legally and physically or alter them in any way, it would cost hundreds of dollars per bird potentially to do that.

So, like any shared environment, you've got to out uh balance the costs and outweigh the cultural, ecolog, ecological and emotional value these birds bring us.

We're a vibrant, expressive, unconventional community.

The presence of the peacocks feels like a reflection of who we are.

Rather than seeing them as a problem, we have an opportunity to embrace them as part of our living landscape.

Their iridescent feathers are part of the tapestry of wonders that make Gulfport the inclusive haven that we are proud to call home.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And you're next.

That's beautiful.

I'm wearing my peacock dress.

Oh, yeah, I got it.

Swap.

Okay, my name is Kate Seidman.

I live um, right?

She is my neighbor, he is my neighbor, she is my neighbor.

It's like it's like we're it's amazing.

We're all here.

Okay.

Um happy Cinco de Mayo.

And thank you for being here and listening to us.

And I have to say, I am amazed.

This city is so incredible.

The city is so incredible, even better after hearing every from everybody.

How what a two together place we live in.

Okay.

So I am also talking about the peacocks.

The peacocks and hens have chosen Gulf Port, our town to live in.

I feel honored.

One lone peacock came to my pine tree, called for a mate, and started his family in my yard.

I couldn't believe it.

He recognized our community, as many of us do, as being a special place where we welcome everyone, all the strangers, no matter their gender, race, or animal nature.

I would like to propose we call ourselves Gulfport, the sunrise town, to erase the past, and together learn how best to share this small piece of paradise with all sentient beings.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate you listening.

Alrighty, who's next Regina.

Hi, Regina Bushemi, the octopus's garden house.

I came to talk peacocks, but first I have to just say, wow.

That presentation was unbelievable.

And yes, Mr.

O'Reilly, you're you're the head of it.

It was awesome.

I have been lucky enough to be um blessed with a lot of the services here.

The police department, the fire department, the EMTs, awesome, awesome.

Justin has been awesome.

Rachel is awesome.

I mean, I just can't go on, I can go on and on.

Dave, Kristen, they're just great.

Um Raya even came to one of the 9-11 events, two of the 9-11 events.

So, Chief, if you're getting a dog, you got a deadline.

Okay, so back to the peacocks.

I wore my peacock blue shirt because I was born and raised in Brooklyn, and I thought peacock blue was a color in a crayon box.

Had no idea how beautiful peacock blue is.

It's gorgeous.

And we have no problem with the peacock.

We mean the there's a lot of them.

But you know, we really don't have a problem with them.

So if you can't, if you're gonna try to get rid of peacocks, you have to get rid of the coyotes first.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Who's next for public comment?

We don't applaud yeah, Lenny.

I mean, we don't applaud it, we don't boo, we don't do anything, we just move it along.

Uh Lenick Ooken Lenny Gukenheimer, uh, Delette Avenue, South.

And uh I'm just amazed uh hearing these all these presentations about what the different departments are doing, and um and the activities that are here in Gulfport.

You could spend all your whole lifetime here just doing things and still not have done everything here in golfport.

Um thing I would like to talk about is uh the two amendments that were passed in a charter having to do with leases.

Uh one concerns about um the the market value of uh uh the l property that's being leased and also the length of time that Elise was run for.

And uh I think there's two the two yacht clubs, uh uh Boca Sega and uh Gulfport Yacht Clubs.

I think their leases are coming up, and um I'm like to ask the city maybe to have a different model for how uh we deal with this issue rather than as a lease consider uh uh contracting for service so that uh the yacht clubs provide certain services to the city.

Well, first of all, they provide uh recreation, they provide education, and let me just preface this.

I should have said I'm not a member of either one, I'm just speaking as a golf port citizen.

Um provide valuable services to the city, and the city could contract with an entity to provide that service, and that way we would not have to deal with the issue of whether it's a lease or not.

It'd be a whole different way of looking at it.

There's some complications about because there's been property improvement that each of them had done, and how that gets calculated.

It wouldn't be just like how would you consider that in a contract?

But I think that might be some kind of avenue to pursue rather than using uh at lease for the uh the at least the property to the yacht clubs.

Uh thank you.

Thank you.

Um yes, April.

So April thing is on 53rd.

Um, I have to say how charming it was to come to the um the mock city council thing.

That was just wonderful.

So that was a great idea, and I thought it was very well run.

Um I have a couple questions.

Um, in my new neighborhood, I've been walking my dog, and you know, we've had all of these contractors digging everything up, so the city had to go and mark everything so that they didn't dig up utility lines and stuff.

And my question is who's supposed to pick up all those flags?

Because I think residents are hesitant to pull them out because they don't know if they're done or not, and you don't want to have to go re-market because that would cost everybody money and time.

So, what is the procedure for that and who's supposed to pick them up?

Um, because it looks it's a you know, they're laying all over the place by now, and so they just look like trash.

Um, and my second thing I was surprised today when my contractor told me that our permit is delayed because we have to wait for the person who's doing it to be on vacation.

And I was rather shocked because I would think in a department, especially this was on the portal, the contractor portal, that we're with this company that has all these employees that somebody else would step in rather than have to wait for somebody to be on vacation.

So those were my things, and it was nice to hear about all the departments today.

So thanks.

Thank you.

Anyone else for public comment?

Yes, Bill.

Karen, I saw you just now.

Treasurer of the Gulfport Senior Center Foundation.

Um, our role in the economy in the um community is to raise funds for um anything needed at the senior center.

As Rachel mentioned, um, the printing of the her wonderful news newsletter.

Um we have gym equipment, a fridge, an ice machine, and recently a new sound system for the uh Hickman Theater.

So come down and uh check that out.

Um, and now we're we're we're looking towards uh raising more funds to get ready for this expansion and renovation projects, and we're so excited.

It's it's amazing that you can really like see it coming.

Um, and so with that, um, we're going towards grants and increase in sponsorship.

Um, a couple of months ago, we the foundation applied for a 20,000 Duke Energy Hero grant, which is a senior emergency preparedness initiative.

This past week we actually approved for a $30,000 for that grant to work with the Duke Energy, and uh, and this was a great, great demonstration of Duke Energy's trust in the city's programs.

So we're really happy to get that increase.

Um the 30,000 will be used to strengthen disaster readiness for low-income vulnerable seniors in the community, and the foundation will work very closely with Jim, Rachel, city staff to assist in providing 250 emergency preparedness kits, as well as provide extreme weather education to coordinate outreach for high uh outreach for high-risk individuals.

We will soon be issuing a formal press release, and we look forward to getting started as soon as we have additional details from Duke Energy.

On the event side, April 18th, we presented a Tom Petty tribute band concert at the Hickman, which sold out to a very appreciative audience, and May 2nd, a comedy magic show sold out with a number of kids and families present, which was great to see.

Next upcoming events, we have a one-woman show on the life of Edith Piaf, who's a French star whose most popular song is Hymn of Love, which was sung by Celine Dion in Paris during the 2024 Olympics.

This should be a fantastic show.

We've waited three years to get her here.

She's from Los Angeles, and I think she walked here, but she's finally here.

So that's coming up, and then lastly, we have our big America 250 celebration, and we really want to make this a great celebration.

We're really gonna have some uh salute to the soldiers, um, start with a color guard, you know, all songs from the 20s to the 50s, and really have a history of music during that era.

We have um Radio St.

Peter's gonna broadcast it live from the Maria Center, and uh in coordination with the headliner Bette Midler who did the uh big band Christmas.

So it'll be an 18-piece orchestra, um, and we're gonna have a dance competition.

There's gonna be a costume contest for for that era you can wear anything from the roaring 20s to the 50s.

So that should be really a fun show.

I think I'm running out of time, but thank you very much.

Thank you.

Kieran, you were next.

I uh Karen Schwartz, Delette Avenue South.

I was so impressed with not only the presentations tonight, but the choreography.

I I thought everybody knew exactly when they were supposed to show, and they were they were entering the stage.

Anyway, thank you, Jim, for organizing that.

Um I actually have two questions.

Um well, one of them is mainly a concern, you know, with the with the drought today.

Um I don't really think that too many people understand about being very water cautious.

And one day my neighbor crossed the street, had the sprinklers going, daylight, it wasn't her day, and I went over and I and I told her, and and this is a very comes to meetings all the time, okay.

She didn't know.

She said, Oh, what she said actually was, but we have well, we're on well.

I'm like, yeah, I'm on a well.

It doesn't matter, it's the same aquifer.

And she was like, oh my god.

I said, Do you know how to turn it off?

She said, No.

Do you know when your day is uh no?

Um, yeah, now luckily they're very well adjusted and that doesn't hit the street or the sidewalk.

They're doing a good job.

But I have seen sprinklers going, I don't know the people, and I'm afraid to say anything.

So am I supposed to go to the portal?

Am I supposed to call the cops?

I don't know what to do.

And also, I don't know how people are being educated.

I think it needs to be on the water bill at a minimum.

Um I think there needs to be much more education, and businesses too.

Um, I know that they have um water police in some cities.

I don't think we do, but I don't know, I don't know who's responsible for reacting to that kind of stuff.

Okay, and here's my final question because I have a little bit of time.

Um there's in the street, right in front of my house on the street, it says Duke Clear, in like, you know, spray paint.

I have no idea what that means.

Now I did I did ask you, uh Vice Mayor, but what does it mean?

Is Duke gonna come and rip up my you know, my right-of-way or the street in front of my house?

I don't know.

And I'd like to find out what what that means.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Before I close public comment, do I have anybody else?

Okay, yes, please.

Rosemary Ninton, uh proud new homeowner on 51st and 17th Avenue South.

Oh, congratulations.

Yes, yes, hello, and thank all of y'all for the wonderful job and your dedication to the city.

I really appreciate it.

I think we have a wonderful group here.

Um as many, I was amazed at all the information from the city and how well they work together.

Just makes you fall in love with it more and more the more you hear about it, and I love that.

Um, I have a couple of things further.

Um I had two salespeople this week yesterday and today, knock on the door, and I thought there was something against that.

I don't know who to contact about that.

I tried to get business cards, but of course they didn't have any, which I probably know why.

Um, okay, and I wanted to comment on last city council meeting.

There were a couple of people, I believe, who commented on the utilities workers out and about in their street and stuff, and we're just pleased with them.

And I just wanted to say that I've been out and about doing the um get tree inventory, and everyone I've come into contact with, which is a lot of them up and down all the streets, they're very pleasant.

They I see them picking up trash.

They I see them picking up trash, I see them trying to put things back, they're hard working.

They're making, I think he told me $16 an hour and wearing a plastic suit in the heat.

I just wanted to acknowledge them that you know there's another side to that.

I've only seen really pleasant um people.

Um other question I would like to ask is the curbs, the granite curbs that were removed when the renovations being done to 58th Street.

I mean, are they gonna be repurposed?

Is there a purpose for them somewhere else?

Have they been saved?

I would hope so because they're really beautiful.

And last but not least, the peacocks.

And I don't have a lot to say because that great party did a wonderful job at expressing it, but I think they're magical.

I lived um for about two years right in the midst of where they're most prevalent, 26 and 56, and I think they're a wonderful addition to the city, and it's it's beautiful, magical self and attracts people.

I often have people stop and ask if you're walking the dog or whatever.

Where are the peacocks?

Have you seen the peacocks today?

You know, they're and because people are attracted to that.

They're they're magnificent.

I've watched them do their little shimmer and their little dances, and it's just fabulous.

And I'm almost out of time.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Before I close it and go to e-comments, anybody else?

No.

Okay, e-comments, please.

Uh yes, there are six of them this evening.

First one is from Corey Videl, a Gulfport resident.

This is Cory Videl.

I had a group of students who participated in the Gulfport mock council.

Thank you to the Gulfport Council.

Oh my goodness, I'm sorry.

That was meant for you.

Uh thank you so much to the Gulfport Council, Vice Mayor My Marlene Shaw, Mayor Karen Love, and City Clerk Teresa Carico for allowing us this opportunity.

The kid kids had so much fun and are genuinely more interested in local affairs.

I love that they got to put their knowledge into action.

I too learned a lot about how to prepare them for this type of activity.

The next one would be even better.

P.S.

I vote white Ibis.

Second is from Leah Scott, who is also a Gulfport resident.

The mock team council event was so inspiring and encouraging for the young people of Gulfport.

Could this be a regular reoccurring event?

Could we look at forming an official team council?

Jeanette Sells is a Gulfport resident.

I enjoyed attending the recent mock city council meeting.

My seven-year-old daughter loved participating in the pub in the public comment and immediately afterwards asked, when is the next one?

Uh Vicki Doyle, a Gulfport resident.

I support the intent of the city-sponsored tree giveaway program, but I respectfully question whether these resources might be used more effectively.

For a tree to survive and to reach maturity, a homeowners need adequate space and the ability to provide consistent watering over many years, which represents a significant commitment of time and money.

As an alternative, could the city consider distributing drought and flood tolerant native ground cover or other resilient plants that may be more accessible for many residents to maintain.

I fully support the efforts to expand our tree canopy, particularly when trees are planted and maintained by the city of Gulfport.

However, I'm concerned that disturbing free trees distributing free trees to residents who may not be equipped to care for them long term could result in an unnecessary loss and wasted resources.

Margaret Tober at Gulfport resident.

Is this standard operating procedure and what's being done to collect these very past balances?

How many customers are on the waiting list that might perhaps become actual paying customers as opposed to those that aren't currently paying?

And the last item is from David Shiner, who is a non-resident.

Regarding the ADA sidewalk ramp improvements, I support this resolution, but urge council to ensure citywide compliance.

ADA requires at least one compliant reportable restroom at Trolley Market Square Special Events.

The restroom at the garden gathering was not compliant and inaccessible in the grass.

ADA compliant restrooms must be positioned on level pavement or sidewalks.

Furthermore, reoccurring sidewalk obstructions by a shopping cart adjacent to Trolley Market Square violate the three-foot ADA clearance requirement for safety.

That's all I have.

Alrighty, thank you very much.

And with that, we will move on to uh staff reports, city manager reports.

Maybe I can answer Schwartz comment and clear do clear is that there's no sorry.

Do clear is just language they put on the street to say there's no Duke utility there.

It's clear of Duke's utility.

Okay.

It doesn't mean we're we're gonna clear this out.

Electric, there's not electric there.

So they wanted to do they could still exactly apply exactly.

The other item in regards to the granite curb, yes, it is repurposed.

We do save the granite curb.

That's all I have.

All righty, thank you.

Um city attorney report.

Mayor Council, just to update you on the Lions Club.

After our last meeting, I contacted the attorney who is helping them.

I guess the way that it's been um uh addressed to me.

I made a changes back on the release, sent it over.

I also made the request for the documents that we asked for, which would be from the international on an affidavit with their letter head, and I've received nothing.

Okay, so I will keep you updated.

Mayor, if I may, please.

We are moving forward with the asbestos abatement.

Right.

And which will then move to demolition.

Yes, thank you.

Alrighty, thank you.

Uh city um managers, I mean city clerk's report, sorry.

No report this evening, Mayor.

All righty.

With that, then we will um move on to council comments and reports, and we'll do that in speaking orders.

So, council member Webb, you are first.

Excellent, thank you, Mayor.

Um so uh first things is our um discussion of upcoming upcoming.

We have the rezoning or the anticipated proposed uh land use amendment change and rezoning for Stetson Law School property.

There will be a meeting on Friday at 6 p.m.

about with um Dean Barros about Stetson's vision for the future of our campus, including proposed zoning and institutional developments, and this will be Friday, May 8th from 6 to 7 p.m.

at the man lounge on Stetson's campus.

Um the address is 1401 61st Street South, and then on Thursday, May 14th, I'll be hosting a town hall meeting at the Gulfport Public Library at 6 p.m.

And this is specifically to walk through the entire process uh the city processes and county processes involved in requesting a land use and a zoning change.

It will also help um residents understand where their voices have the most impact during which time periods and what the time period and how quickly or how um how much time because this is actually lengthy process that this would take.

And so again, that is the town hall meeting is Thursday, May 14th.

The meeting with Dean Barrio Barrows is Friday, May 8th.

And if you have any questions, please or reach out to me.

And in terms of the um questions on uh from the from the audience, I think it's well, one thing is I was trying to quickly pull up the state statute related to turnaround time for permitting.

That is regulated by Florida statute, so they're we're required by state law to respond within a certain number of business days.

I couldn't find the statute, but that's something that's readily knowable, and I'll follow up with you, April.

Um I also want to thank the senior um the senior center foundation.

I love that y'all have um found corporate philanthropic dollars for that and are not like relying on capital improvement projects or um general revenue to do a project that's under $50,000.

These are projects that are readily available in our community through philanthropic dollars and corporate um donation dollars, and I think it's really shows a commitment to our seniors that you are looking for revenue outside of a city budget to help supplement and complement you to Rachel.

The um the budget that we do have, especially as we are pressing up against uh property tax discussion that will be coming down.

So I really hope to see more of that, especially for these one-off project, these smaller projects that are important but aren't critical to our infrastructure and other things.

So thank you.

And I will let other people follow up with the other council members follow up with the rest of the comments.

Thanks, y'all.

Thank you, Mayor.

So Trey did a great article here on Sierra Clark, who is the vice president of Fusion 49th.

Wonderful person, very, very, very good person.

Um Lincoln Cemetery Cleanup went very well.

Please, I mean, it's not maybe something you would stop by, and that's maybe a good thing.

But if you're on a walk or you find yourself down there, it looks amazing.

You can actually be in the cemetery and see the trail, all of that brushes gone.

Um I was the only Gulf Port person there.

Um, Fusion 49th is the fusion of Golfport and uh the child's park neighborhood, and it is to make 49th, the road that we share safer, more walkable, more fun to go to.

Um, and they're they're kind of doing the heavy lifting these days.

So Kendrix was there, and um Chief Randy had four for police there, and they were great.

So there's um city um support, but we do need support from the residences from the residents.

Um Saturday is our second Saturday.

And again, I just want to mention so these aren't well attended.

I I kind of I understand why they switch their narrative and they switch the way that they're doing it.

So instead of just having um uh vendors and whatnot, they're offering business um insight, they're having poetry readings, they're doing all sorts of things to make it very interesting.

So if you have time on Saturday, please join.

And if you can go to a meeting, it's the first Monday of every month at the neighborhood center.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Um, so I just would like to acknowledge um publicly that it is municipal clerk's week, and since they went last, it's fresh in everybody's mind how incredible they are.

And ours are the best.

So if you get a chance, if you happen to be around, if you're coming to ask them for a favor or to get something notarized, or whatever it is that you need to do, just thank them and uh just you know, make sure that you're appreciative of them because they do a lot, and they definitely um keep the city running and you know, all the information that everybody asks for, it it all has to come from somewhere, and they keep it all ready so that when you ask it's available quickly.

So just uh appreciate them, give them everything they deserve.

Thanks, guys.

That's all.

Thank you.

Uh I just found that out on Monday myself, and um and clearly they play a very vital role as a very important link in our city operations, and they serve in in so many seen and unseen ways, and as you've just heard, so does all of our other staff members too.

There's always so much going on behind the scenes that's just simply not seen.

And and and I was really glad that we did this tonight because I I keep hearing from people well, what do they do?

Now don't they do it?

That's it.

That's exactly it.

There's so much that they do do, and um, so uh I hope this answers some of those questions for those that were here for it and that perhaps are viewing.

As we heard, there's pretty good viewership out there watching the the video of it.

Um, but you know, between maintaining public records agenda, supporting elections, public access, all part of what they do, and a heartfelt appreciation to our clerk and deputy clerk for their dedication and service to this community every day.

My pleasure.

So on April 29th, as you've heard, we hosted a student council meeting, and it was a memorable success.

Uh, thank you to council for your approval to our city manager and the staff for everything that they did behind the scenes.

Again, this seems to be a common thread tonight, um, for an event like this.

A special thank you to our city clerk who played a large role.

She prepared the agenda items that they they determined in their in their class.

She prepared resolutions and ordinances for them to work through and um and then guided them through the meeting as we see her do in our council meetings, too.

So thank you, all of you.

And thank you to Corey Videl, Home School Coordinator of Elevate Learning Services for signing their research and preparing the students.

We're grateful for that partnership and the opportunity to bring civics to life beyond the classroom.

Thank you to the parents and families who encouraged and consented to their children's participation, and they were quite enthusiastic.

It was really fun.

And to the students who stepped up into the role of a leader with confidence and grace, we're so proud of our young leaders.

It truly takes a community to make something like that possible.

It truly takes a community to make something like that possible, and this community rose to the occasion.

By all reports, interest is already growing with more students eager to participate in future student council meetings.

Our young leaders give us every reason to look forward with hope and pride.

And on May 2nd, our community continued this cherished tradition with Climber Park once again providing the perfect setting.

Thank you to all who brought this meaningful gathering to life, and we look forward to more like this.

We continue to promote the adopt a drain program through Gulfport Connects on the city website.

The reminder simple, a small act can make a big difference.

The adopted drain program invites residents to volunteer to help keep storm drains clean, to reduce street flooding and protect our wall water quality and wildlife.

If you haven't already, we encourage you to consider taking part.

Every drain makes a difference.

Now for more even more serious topic, as hurricane season approaches, we're asking residents to take an important step pledge to evacuate.

We understand that for many in our community, the memories of 2024 are still very present, and recovery is ongoing.

This pledge is rooted in care for yourself, your loved ones, our first responders, and our community as a whole.

Being prepared is one of the most meaningful ways we can what meaningful things we can do for one another.

We encourage you to visit the city website to make your pledge.

And then we look forward to seeing you on Thursday, May 28th at the Hurricane Preparedness Seminar at the Hickman Theater from 6 to 8 p.m.

From 6 to 7, there'll be vendors with helpful resources.

And at 7 p.m., the chief meteorologist Bobby Duskins of WTSP Channel 10 News will take the stage to share expert insight on hurricane preparedness evacuation zones and staying safe this season.

Knowledge is one of the best tools we have, so please join us.

One final reminder that C click fix is now available for reporting and tracking non-emergency service requests.

Residents can report community concerns such as sidewalk damage, drainage concerns, traffic sign issues, park maintenance concerns, sanitation issues, cold compliant, code compliance, and more.

You will be able to submit the location of the issue, upload photos, and see the progress of the online portal on the website.

And one final comment.

If anybody has questions about how to help deter them from your particular house, if you're not happy they're there, contact me and I can share some information with you.

Thank you.

Alrighty.

So under my council comments, I wanted to state that I was one of the invited guests at the state of the beaches, which was about 10 days ago.

And it was really fun to be there because it gave me about 25 opportunities to brag on my city.

Okay.

I mean, really truly of all the cities that were represented there, we are the only city not charging for parking.

Okay.

So I wanted to make you aware of that.

I also became aware that our city is quite much.

Let's see, I'm getting tired.

Our city is further along in rebuilding than the other cities, was my observation and my discussion and all in listening.

And also when we talked about budgets versus population, nobody is working on the kind of budget we are with our kind of population.

It was really disport disproportionate some of the things that the other city said.

So I was proud.

Little footnote I learned that I want all of our residents to know so they don't get stuck.

They do regulate you know municipal lots.

But if somebody has a private lot, the going rate these days along the beaches is they're charging you $17.50 for two hours.

So I just I don't want anyone to get stung.

I wanted you to know that.

The second thing I wanted to share was that I did go up to Tarpon Springs, and I did the uh Ford Pinellus ride there last Saturday.

Um it was a wonderful ride.

Again, the reason I did that, it's a wonderful opportunity for me again to share with people in Tarpon Springs why they want to come down to Gulfport and spend some money here.

So it was great, and then I did see some feedback that said, Oh, how cool I wish they'd do it in Gulfport.

Well, in fact, they did in 2022 in Wolfgang was wearing that shirt on the Tarpon Springs ride.

So we know that they were here, we were on that ride.

In terms of I'm trying to read my um my very poor typing.

Um, in terms of permit issues, I do want to say that um you know, when I hear from public comments um that, you know, well, is it working?

Are we making progress?

How's it going?

We're not getting reports.

I want to tell you that just as the mayor, when I came into office, it was normal for me to get seven to ten complaints every single week with permitting issues.

Now I probably get one or less per week.

So that's a measuring tool for me.

With that being said, if you're out there and you're hearing me and you've got permitting issues that you think aren't being handled, please give me a uh a um email at K Love and my Golfport dot US.

So many times it is the my most minute communication issue that's being missed, and we can speed it along.

So I'm very open to doing that.

Memorial Day commemoration, this will be the third year that the city of Gulfport is doing a Memorial Day commemoration.

We're so lucky to have a veterans park.

It will be 525 Memorial Day from 2.30 to 3 30 in the afternoon.

I would like to request that everybody come out and participate in this.

I'm gonna guesstimate six to eight page uh non anonymous report on um uh regarding short-term rentals.

I can't do anything with that, okay?

You know, if you if you send me an email, that's one thing, but if you send me an anonymous report, I don't know who's reporting it, where they live, I don't know anything.

I can't really do anything with it, so I'm sorry, but that's the way it is.

Um, and then one question that I think I can answer um came from um the water crisis and how's that being enforced.

It's my understanding that if you see violations that that would be a call to code enforcement.

And I would think that you would want to call code enforcement when you see it, and if they're not in the middle of 16 other things, they'll probably get out there as quick as they can because I agree.

We are in the crisis mode, and I also see my neighbors watering, and they want to tell me that's reclaimed water, and now I've learned no, it's not reclaimed water.

So that's all that I have, and with that, can we uh move to consent, please?

Let me stop the timer.

I said, let me stop the timer though.

Item 6A consider approval of meeting minutes from meeting held April 21st, 2026.

And item 6b, resolution number 2026-28, a resolution authorizing the city manager to enter into agreement with Central Florida contractors incorporated for sidewalk and ADA ramp improvements.

Motion to approve.

Second.

All in favor, aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Passes unanimously.

Alrighty.

So we have no ordinances tonight.

Um we're going to move to ordinance 8A, and then I'm going to ask council if they would consider tabling 8B because of the time.

Item 8A, resolution number 2026-29, a resolution approving a salary adjustment for the city clerk following the attainment of the certified municipal clerk designation.

Motion to approve.

Second.

Okay.

No, we don't call to the city manager on this case.

All right, thank you.

Um when the city clerk is promoted to the position of from deputy clerk, um, one of the requirements of her contract was that city council would recognize her receiving the CMC's certification designation and would make an appropriate salary adjustment.

All righty.

And you have the clerk's memo.

Yes, we have the clerk's memo.

So, in speaking order, starting with council member Webb.

Uh, any discussion you'd like to have on this discussion, not questions.

Questions, uh questions at the same time.

Okay.

So I want to um congratulate you on becoming a CMC.

Thank you.

Um, and also thank you for a fantastic job.

And I wanted to also looking for my information on here.

Yeah.

There we go.

I also wanted to um wanted to get organized.

Um I also wanted to just ask if ask what the what's usual in c or ask what's usual and customary in terms of increases after attaining um a certification I know in the nonprofit environment that that is very common.

So not only to have your education paid for, but also to then have an increase tied to that.

And I was wondering what information you found related to like to promotions after attainment of a increased professional license or certification.

Well, they did poll all of the Pinellas County city clerks on this.

Um many of them have been certified for so many years.

Uh some of them are master municipal clerks.

Uh depends on, they gave me a range of anywhere from two percent all the way up to eight percent.

Um it depends a lot solely on some of them are not charter officers like I am, some of them are under the city manager.

Um so the city manager got to determine their raise as some of them sat on the certification for a long time and took their time with it, so it wasn't in their contract as far as uh receiving that any type of increase for that.

So um I give you the the range of two to eight percent because those are the the information that I received, but that is across 21 different cities in the I did not receive a response from everybody.

Okay, thank you so much.

And and I have a question for the city manager about budgeting.

Um I know that we know that we are also preparing for uh belt tightening next year in anticipation of uh reduction in property a reduction in our revenue from property taxes.

Um is there any prohibition to splitting any kind of um meritorious pay increase up over two years?

That would be between you because it's a chartered officer.

Okay, so it's not even my purpose.

It's not even your purview.

Okay, the clerk works directly for you as a city attorney.

Okay, I do.

So that question could be to the um to the council.

So then mayor is or council, is there any prohibition to splitting up a meritorious uh increase in pay over two years since we are anticipating uh I was looking at it four and a half to ten percent decrease in revenue next year.

Okay.

So I'm gonna take that as you're kind of making that suggestion as an option.

No, I'm actually asking if that is allowable.

I don't know if there's anything in our charter or budgeting that would prohibit it.

So that's why I was asking it as a that's why I was asking them because I wasn't sure if it's even allowable.

Well, it's I mean in a but it that's an is the issue is twofold.

One we are allowed, we could do something that would be something that you would amend her contract agreement or discuss with the clerk.

Okay, from a financial standpoint, it has very little impact one way or best way for me to put it.

All right, I would also like to so then I do have a recommendation or a suggestion of um of setting the amount and then setting the terms of the distribution of the amount um either for over uh considering it over two years, depending on how the conversation goes.

Um just because I I think that it's important to have like okay, if you because we're in my head, we're setting a press uh precedent for what meritorious um bonuses look like, and then it's okay, so then if it's five percent or if it's three percent, then is that over one year, or does that go over two years?

How do we responsibly budget this to make sure that they're get that any of our charter employees are getting the bonus that is uh we don't receive bonuses?

Or I mean the the meritorious increase, meriton meritorious increase that they deserve.

Yeah, thank you.

Council member early.

Yes, I would be afraid that we would lose um city clerk caracole in that.

I mean, since I ask her if she'll join me in the private sector every other week, so um I um I'm all for you getting your eight percent five five percent, whatever it is.

I've requested five.

Okay.

Thank you.

Councilmember Donch.

Yeah, I'm good with five percent now.

Okay.

Um I appreciated all of the background information that we were provided as different council members requested it, and then it was forwarded to all of us, and I found that very helpful.

I had also had a conversation with the city manager uh about um not only what was what transpired at the time of her promotion, but is in regards to budgeting, and um I'm certainly sensitive and equally concerned about the upcoming potential budget concerns.

Um on the other hand, um uh you know she did achieve the goals that were set for her, and so I I don't think I have any other questions beyond that.

Okay, thank you.

And my thoughts would be that she didn't just achieve the goals that were set for her, she did it in a shorter time period.

So my thoughts are if you were hired in without that education and encouraged to get that inju education within a certain time period, and you did so.

Um, and if you're telling me that the norm is 2002, excuse me, 2% to 8% uh increase was the best that you you were able to formulate, then I don't think that 5% is out of uh out of line.

And you know, um I think we're try not to avoid talking about the numbers up here, but we all know what that is, and um yes, we are all worried about the budgeting for sure, um, being that we we have great concerns about property tax, but um I feel like this is probably kind of an agreement that was made that get this education and then um you will see an increase because she came in at a much lower wage than what our outgoing uh city clerk was getting in 2023, and this still won't bring her anywhere near what that person was getting in 2023.

So um I don't think we'd have to do public comment on this.

You don't have to.

I do have one e-comment though.

Oh, you have an e-comment?

Okay.

Well, if we're gonna do an e-comment, then I have to do public comment.

So uh anybody here for public comment before we read the e-comment.

Yes, five percent is not all that much.

I don't care how much you have the time.

You have to come on.

Regina, you can't order.

I say I want order.

She's I need this on record.

Yeah, Regina Buscemi, Gulfport resident.

She's worth a weight in gold.

Give her five percent.

Thank you.

Thank you, Miss Busha.

And we have an e-comment.

Uh the e-comment is from uh Miss Margaret Tober, who's a Gulfport resident, and uh says well deserved.

All righty, thank you.

Uh you want to call the vote, please?

Councilmember Webb, aye.

Councilmember Early, yes.

Councilmember Donch?

Yes, Vice Mayor Shaw, yes, Mayor Love.

Yes, congratulations.

Thank you so much to all of you.

I appreciate you.

And then I would like to ask that we table eight uh B for tonight, only because it's almost 10 o'clock and we still have uh new business.

Yes, yes, yes, yeah.

I'm just asking for consulting.

Oh yeah, please again.

Thank you.

All righty, we have no discussion item tonight, so we will move to new business and we'll do it in speaking order.

Great, thank you, councilwoman.

I mean, thank you, um, Mayor, Madam Chair.

Uh, so for new business, uh, one thing I am asking um for a resolution to support the Stetson University College of Law and their request for a Bureau of Historic Preservation grant.

It is to preserve the woodwork and windows on the historical buildings of their campus, and it is not in competition with any other grants that would benefit the city, and so I would appreciate um the council's support on this.

Yes, thank you.

I'm in head shakes.

The city clerk has the official sealed copy.

So before you leave this evening, if you'd like to just stop by my desk here and give your signature to the letter.

Okay.

Excellent.

And then the second point of business is I've had um local families reach out to me about creating a kind of committee to support our Gulfport Elementary School that was done in Shore Acres to improve their public school from um where it was to the A plus school that I became, and I love that idea so much that I reached out to my friend um school board member Laura Hine, who led that effort, and I am coordinating a meeting between parents and the school board.

And I love that idea so much that I reached out to my friend School Board Member Laura Hine, who led that effort, and I am coordinating a meeting between parents and the school board.

I've also reached out to Superintendent because as they are closing schools, I think it is important that they know that Gulfport parents support our public school students and our public schools here, and hopefully we enjoy and our parents and families enjoy going to Gulfport Elementary for years to come.

So I will, if you are interested in that, um please reach out to me.

I don't think there's any action required on behalf of the council, but if you'd like to stay apprised, I can definitely make sure that I keep you apprised of this.

Absolutely.

Excellent.

No new business.

All righty.

I have nothing thinking.

I have two items that I believe might be quick.

The first is uh I'm asking for a consensus for the uh golf scholar and Dr.

Hago's uh educational proposal in the fall.

Yes.

Yes, yes.

Yes, you have your okay, and then the second one is um so we've heard quite a bit about the um student mock council meeting, and um amongst their actions, um they approved uh a city bird, the white ibis, and so I'm asking for consensus to put on the agenda that we adopt a white ibis as our city bird.

Yes, yes, yes, love it.

Not the peacock.

Yeah, it was that that was actually quite a debate.

Okay, that's all I have.

All right.

So I only have one item.

Um a few weeks ago, maybe a few months ago, but I think it was just a few weeks ago.

I um asked that um I asked council for a consensus that we could do a call for artists to um call out our artists and ask them to do um uh to it's late and I'm mixing up my words.

I'm sorry.

I did a ask for a call for artists for a new sign on 18th and 49th.

Okay, as a result of asking for that.

Um, there were a couple really good questions that were asked of me that I hadn't thought through and I didn't know the answers to, so I feel like I do now.

So to answer your questions, I think that night the city manager said to me, Would you be willing to pay them 10,000?

And I said no.

And um, so I have conferred with a couple of people, and um my suggestion is based on that that and also being an artist, that we would offer a payment of $500 to the award-winning artist, and also the cut I was asked what would be the cost to replace the sign.

So we would not do a wrap.

Okay, if you look at that sign that's actually a large glass panel on the front, it's I think about eight foot by 20 foot.

Um, we would actually remove that panel and put in a new one, which would be the rendering of whoever were were to win this for them to install it, and um uh the actual installation as well as making the sign itself, the total cost would be $4,026.

So that would be after paying the artist, which we'd gladly play, it'd be $4,526.

So what I'm asking tonight is if we can make a con if we can have a consensus that we could direct the city manager to put out a formal um call to artists um uh to see what kind of uh applications we get back in.

The request in the uh uh would be that we were asking that um excuse me, I had my words written down and I'm failing.

Uh the request is for the artists to who want to participate to produce a rendering that is colorful, welcoming to all, and introduces the trolley market square park.

Um, I think those were the main questions that I was asked.

Um I I think one other question that was asked though was what about the rights to use that?

Uh the artists would give up the rights and the city would have the right to use that rendering uh in the future for things as well.

So that's what I'm looking for a consensus if I can get three to agree on that.

Yes.

Oh sorry, Councilmember Web.

I have a question.

Um is it it's a sign that says welcome to Trolley Market Square?

Or is that doesn't it say welcome to golf port right now, right?

It says welcome to Gulfport right now and it's strictly black and white, and I don't think it represents so no, it would say it would say good welcome to golfport.

It would be as inclusive and welcome milk I get it.

I just want to make sure it's not something that is just welcome to this park.

It's welcome to the whole town.

Right, but it would also name trolley markets uh uh square park because a lot of people don't realize that that is the name of that, and there is historical significance to trolley market square.

I feel like that might deserve its own sign then or something.

I feel like it's welcome to golf port.

It's like you know, it's supposed to be welcoming you to the town, not necessarily mentioning the name of any park.

I want to be fair to all the parks, I guess, but also you could somehow acknowledge there's a giant trolley there that tells you that it's trolley market square.

So um spending $4,000 to recognize that park seems a little bit much.

But if it just said welcome to golf port, I'm good with that.

Well, the the point was not the the main point that I was making was that I think for us to have a black and white sign right there at that is a major mistake, so I want it to be colorful, but would it name trolley market square, identify that as trolley market square as well as welcome to golfport?

Yes.

So I have I need a consensus right now.

I have one.

My my hesitation is about the $500 that seem for the rights of art that seems low, and I was wondering how you came up with that with that amount.

I talked to two other artists and I said, okay, I have a figure in my head.

Tell me what you think is reasonable, and that was what the number was.

Okay, okay.

Um yes.

And people want to, yeah, if that's the going rate for art.

Well, you know, I will I'm not saying I'm not here to like overvalue your production, but do I feel like there's artists that do I feel like there's artists that would not even participate?

Yes.

Do I think that we could get something that we're looking for?

Yes.

Okay.

If we don't like what we get, then we're going to make an assumption that that wasn't enough money.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yes.

Yes.

All right.

I have the consensus.

Thank you.

And that was all that I have uh for tonight.

That uh and I am getting on a player plane and landing uh in uh in the snow in um tomorrow morning, yes.

Well, in Denver, actually.

So thank you all for hanging with us.

I think it was a great meeting.

Thank you to the staff.

I know it's been a very long night.

Thank you for the consensus on tabling the uh policies and procedures until the next meeting.

So thank you all.

Be safe.

See you later.