Good evening and welcome to our council meeting on June 16th.

I think we've got kind of a lively group tonight.

So I call this meeting to order, and we will start with an invocation given by council member early, and then from there we will go to the Pledge of Allegiance.

So if you can stand, I ask that you do so.

So this is a quote by Gloria Steinem.

I never wanted to be a politician or elected person myself, so I love to work for other women who did.

And I hope that more girls will do that.

Council Member Early?

Council Member Donch?

Here.

Presentation and an inductee for our very first centurion awardee member, okay.

So I I now I just want to say we're fudging by a couple of days, okay.

This individual does not turn a hundred for seven more days, but we're we're going to present it tonight.

So a couple of things.

Uh our paths never crossed until tonight.

I've been here 16 years, but I never met him.

But I do want to say that um Mr.

Atkinson settled into Gulfport in the 50s with the love of his life, Mary, following World War II.

Okay.

In 1957, he got involved with the Gulfport Little League, and over the years he served in almost every single role there was from chief uh cook to bottle washer to restroom cleaner upper to yards maintenance, the whole bit for 50 years of service.

50 years he did this.

That is why you might know him from the name Lum Atkinson Ballfields.

Okay, that's uh that's on our building now.

So both Little League and Bogey High School both benefited from him working at Florida Power as his talents were responsible for them being able to play at night.

So we're going to award him the centurion award, and um he's probably not gonna stay for the whole meeting, but this is your opportunity to show your appreciation for 50 years.

Yes.

That's your award.

I've got a lot of the door, but I'm not a door.

I've got it.

I'm a love.

They're gonna take a couple photos here of you, all right?

We're getting here.

Now I'm just wondering, did your pass um cross with our former mayor, Yvonne Johnson?

Oh yeah.

Well, I think we should get a photo with both of you.

I heard you had a show.

All right.

Oh, it's good.

He liked out you were on a different team.

So he didn't coach you.

Okay, okay.

Turn around, okay.

We're hoping to present this to you too someday.

I got two more years to go.

Lum and I have been good friends for many years.

Oh, I didn't know.

Well, my son, uh, who is standing right back there.

Okay, he was on the fire department with Lum.

And he Lum was his coach on the members.

Okay.

Very good.

Well, I'm so glad that you came and um to receive this award today.

I'm so glad that you came to acknowledge what he's received, and now you've got something to shoot for, right?

We're applauding.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

All righty, so our second presentation tonight will be given by our very own council member Jennifer Webb.

Um, she's going to kind of bring us up to date on a couple of the bills that passed.

This isn't about the tax proposal, but everything else, a couple of the bills that passed and what it means to Gulfport and and why we need to be aware of it.

Alright, so she's gonna hobble down here, but she doesn't have purchases, so that's progress.

Thanks for your patience.

Alright, y'all.

In addition to my duties on City Council, I also work with the Sun Coast League of Cities.

Every year I track bills, I help organize their members if they can go up to Tallahassee to advocate for policies that are good for our municipalities.

Can you hear?

Do I need to just look this way?

Yeah.

Sorry.

Here you go.

Perfect.

Oh, I just did that thing where I did it too many times.

Okay.

Where do I point it?

I mean, I think it means everybody.

Okay.

So first off, I organized the bills, and this is something that you can request from Teresa if you'd like.

It has all of the bills that impacted the city from the highest impact to the lowest impact.

I'm only covering high impact bills today.

These are high impact bills because of who we are as a city.

We're a city that owns its own utilities.

We're a full service small city.

We have a working waterfront and low-lying and storm exposed areas.

These are the bills that impacted us.

I put property tax on the top because that is the biggest impact to us.

We're going to talk about that on Thursday.

Please, everybody come.

But we also, in the highest, most impactful bills that I'm going to cover today are changes to the utility services, local government financing, the suits against the government, building permits and land use, land planning, affordable housing, transportations, especially concerning the right of way, and then final official actions that anti-DEI bill.

Property tax you'll get to tomorrow.

Thursday.

Thursday, just joking.

If I shake it, it doesn't work any better.

Is justin in the house?

Yep.

Oh, all right.

If I just okay.

So the first thing is the utility bill service.

The important thing to note about this city manager is that it's only for contracting going forward.

It doesn't open up past contracts.

And that's important because we have lots of active contracts.

And so what this does is right now, the way that the bill is written, we can have an automatic 25% kind of surcharge on out of city water sewer service recipients.

We have a couple hundred people who live outside of Gulfport who receive our utilities.

So that's a revenue stream that has the potential for being reduced.

Moving forward, what we're gonna have to do is it eliminates the old automatic 25% surcharge authority and instead lets the lets a water sewer utility after a public hearing set separate outside city rates based on the same factors that are used inside the city, and it can and it's it and it's capped, so the surcharge can be no more than 25%.

So this is important because this is a potential revenue reduction, and we provide services to people living outside of our city.

We also receive treated water wholesale from St.

Petersburg, and so the cost basis for outside rates may also be need to be documented carefully by them.

Could you stand on one leg?

You've got jokes.

All right, you know, this is the bill that there was a lot, um, a lot of talk about.

The good news is that here in Gulfport we do a lot of this already.

So we already publicly notice our budget meetings, we already um we already provide opportunities for people to provide feedback.

The one thing that we don't do that we will have to do is um look at kind of a uh what happens, what how how would we trim 10%?

So it's called a belt tightening exercise.

We have to do this, um, each time we engage in the budget X um exercise.

Interestingly, if things pass the property tax um bill passes or constitutional amendment passes in November, that'll be I don't know, more than a 10%, it'll be about a 10% exercise.

So uh we'll be living this in real time.

The city must also post tentative adopted and final budgets with prescribed content.

So it needs to be jurisdiction-wide, it needs to and have fund summaries and expense breakdowns by department by program by debt capital and org chart or staffing summary and reserve analysis.

It also must list every um publish quarterly employee compensation summaries, including titles, names, and salaries, and publish a budget developmental calendar each year by January 30th.

So this will take additional staff time to compile and additional funding to put on our website.

Next is suits against the government.

This is for those of you who just need a battery.

I think it needs a battery.

Okay, um, suits against the government.

Right now it's one of 200, 300, thank you.

Um, the attorney, our city attorney confirmed.

Right now it's um, we pay out uh up to 200 per person, 300 per incident for any suits against our government.

So let's say that something, somebody did something wrong.

If it's clear, we um we can pay up that if it needs to go to be settled higher than that, then it gets brought before the judicial um the legislature for a claims bill, and honestly, this is what they claim is that this will speed up the claims process.

I don't see how it does that because you have to find a member who will introduce a bill for claims um to put it forward, and it takes an average of 10 years of trying to do that before you're paid out.

So instead of fixing their system, they have attempted to fix um how we engage, and so they've raised the bar from 200 to uh 200 to 350 per um person and 500,000 per incident incident, and it also shortens the pre-notice, the pre-suit notice, and it requires a final dispensation of claims from six months to four months.

So there's some attempts to pick up the pace.

This is not as bad as it could have been.

There was a bill up there that was a million and two million.

Um, and so this is a lot better than what it could have been.

And this is important because it exposes us to it's a higher exposure for us and shorter timelines, which changes our city's liability profile and claims handling deadlines.

So, again, this is gonna require more um more consulted work and a quicker turnaround time, and just like in other industries, when you don't give people a longer runway, you pay more more for those services.

This should have estimated um increase in cost for city administration, land use and development regulations.

Um, this is interesting, and this is important to us because I know that when Gulf portions talk about our city, they talk about the character, they talk about the neighborhood feel, and this all right, and this um what this does is it actually denies the ability, it requires that you include compatibility that included compatibility factors for land use regulations or LDRs, are objective design standards and factors, and it denied and denials on compatibility grounds must be identified, must identify each area of incompatibility with particularity.

So you can't just say it's uh will impact community character or neighborhood feel alone to justify a denial of a LDR or you have to actually give something that is particular in terms of its incompatibility.

So I won't get into details, but Mark can give you more details about that if you're interested.

Local land planning and development.

This applies to governments over 10,000 people.

And since we have 11,800, we qualify.

And basically, we must offer our city has to offer more developed pre-application consultation services.

We need to perform it needs to be performed at the applicant's choice by either city staff or a qualified private contractor.

It must maintain, we must maintain a registry of at least four qualified contractors or two qualified firms.

And the bill imposes short review shot clocks, deemed complete and deemed approved consequences for administratively approved permits and amends the plat and replat review.

Are we working now?

No.

So this will also have an impact.

And unfortunately, my slides and my script aren't the same, so you're getting something different from what I'm saying than what you would be seeing on the slide.

So maybe we can get that to you.

All right, building permits and inspections.

Thanks.

We've covered land use and development regulations.

And so you can go one more.

Thanks, Chief.

We can go again.

Awesome.

Affordable housing.

So we have a lot of so this expands the live local project.

It um includes now county, municipal, and school board land and certain parcels with the house of worship.

We have lots of those properties throughout throughout our small little community.

And so what this does is it limits setbacks and step back requirements.

It lets applicants choose which version of the live local law applies, and it amends the Fair Housing Act to include government as persons.

And this is important because making funding-based or affordable housing-based permitting discrimination, it makes it unlawful, and waiving sovereign immunity for such claims, so then there's no claim.

So this is an important bill, especially as we come up with permitting things because this is a bill that I covered for a couple of clients.

What the bill does, the bill is first off very vague.

But what it does, it clearly prohibits DEI officers and offices, creates a resident cause of action.

So cities can't have like a DEI or a liaison to certain populations.

There's many carve outs in this, complying with the law, recognizing holidays, observances, content neutral, event permitting, single shelters, and at risk youth programs were all had to be carved out because at first they were saying that you couldn't you couldn't have any programs that were specific to single population.

And so that was bad.

So that excluded battered women's houses, that excluded youth programming for like girls, like the Pace Girl Center.

And so slowly they carved all of that out, and what was left was something that still had left a lot to be desired.

The next slide will talk about what DEI refers to according to this definition.

Next slide.

Alright, DEI.

It um according to this bill is diversity, equity, inclusion is defined as any effort to manipulate or otherwise influence the composition of employees with reference to race, color, sex, and ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, other than to ensure hiring conform conforms with state and federal anti-discrimination laws.

It also is defined as any effort to promote or provide preferential treatment or special benefits to a person or group based on those descriptors.

And finally, it is defined as any effort to promote or adopt training programming or activities designed or implemented with reference to those characteristics.

So clearly in the law, it says you can't have DEI offices, you can't have DEI officers, and you have to also check your funding by contractors and granters to see what they're that they do not and will not use local government funds to instruct employees on materials related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

So opening up all of your contracts, making sure that your contractors don't do any kind of DEI work in their own organization as part of this.

And that this becomes effective January 1 of 27.

It does.

So what about contractors and contracts that we've already awarded?

Is it retroactive?

It is not, and um, they were very clear with that that this is not to undo contracts that you currently have, that if you have a contract with a firm for 30 years, as long as it's entered into before January 1st, then this doesn't apply to those contractors or contracts.

Um there's a lot of potential liability, they talk about malfeasance and misfeasance in this.

Um there's and they don't define it, and so there's a lot of risk for cities.

Next slide.

Thank you.

What it does not prohibit, let's get to the happy stuff.

Okay, so we can, um, we need to comply with state and federal laws and regulations.

So EEOC, we still do that.

Yay!

Um we still get to recognize and promote certain holidays and observances.

We can celebrate MLK Day, we can some celebrate Juneteenth, we can celebrate.

Um Senator Roussan asked about the collard green festival.

We can celebrate that apparently, even though it doesn't fall within that specific statute, but the bill sponsor said so.

Um we can celebrate holidays and special observances designated by the state law.

We can celebrate patriotic and national observances recognized by federal law or the events and individuals forming their basis.

So let's say that we have, and that's important because there's different ways of framing this, and so sometimes it talks about a state holiday, but not the people behind the state holiday.

So it might say you can celebrate Juneteenth, but Juneteenth is about celebrating African African American history, and so therefore we can include people those people in months dedicated to them.

It's very convoluted.

This is gonna go to court.

Recognizing or honoring individuals and groups behind the monuments, memorials, and museums in chapters 265 and 267.

We also are allowed to own, operate, maintain, fund, and conduct events at monuments and memorial listed in 54 USC, and I have the statute there, and located in the state.

So Pulse Memorial, that's a specific carve out for the Pulse Memorial in Orlando and for the Pulse massacre.

Um, so for example, we could do a acknowledgement of the Pulse Massacre and a memory of remembrance of that, but we could not do a pride proclamation.

That was discussed ad nauseum.

And there's lots of different kind of caveats like that in the bill.

We can issue event permits and leases in a content neutral manner and provide public safety services.

So issuing a permit for a pride parade or the Juneteenth, or having Juneteenth down at the park this week, we can still do that next year.

Those are things that we can still do as long as the permitting process is content neutral and evenly and fairly administered to all.

And we can use equal opportunity and equal employment opportunity materials designed to inform a person about the prohibition against discrimination based on protected status under the state law.

Next slide.

Next slide.

This is just more examples of this.

Next slide, we can get through.

Next slide.

All right.

In all, what does this mean for residents?

It real all of these bills pose a real revenue challenge.

Well, two of these bills pose a real revenue challenge for us.

One of they all come with new deadlines that we'll need to staff up for.

They all uh many of them expose the city to more litigation potentially, and also there's just a lot of work around utilities that are gonna have to be done in this coming year.

Um, as the mayor said, and I forgot to mention previously the 1134, the local government for the DEI, that doesn't go into effect until January 1st, 2027.

These bills have different enacting days, they don't all become uh law at being once they're signed, and so in the more expansive 40 page dossier, I prepared for y'all, all of they all have the enacting date in there.

Um, and this is more of a compilation, guys.

I use heavily relied on the Florida League of Cities work to inform this so that you could all trust that it was not just my work, but a group of lots of um organizational, lots of professionals who are pulling this together.

Any questions, council members?

It was a lot of information.

I think this final slide really says it all.

Yes, council member early.

I don't have any questions, but you handled yourself very well.

So thank you.

You're welcome.

I don't have any questions, thank you.

Nor do I.

Of course, I'd like to assimilate it.

And so thank you so much for working on it and presenting it.

Sure.

Thank you.

I've been reading and reading and reading, so it just really helps to hear another person kind of um give the abbreviated version as on top of what my brain is thinking to make sure I am on task and uh understanding everything that's changing.

So I appreciate you taking the time to do those 40 pages and to come up and give us a slight uh brief presentation, even with some technical difficulties.

You're really welcome.

And y'all, next year, I think.

Important things to be on the lookout for.

Um, I'll just conclude with this because a lot of these bills are meant to not be easy to understand as just the written language.

I mean, I've been, yeah, you have to listen to the debate and the questions to get a clear understanding of what's going on next year.

We will see um transit oriented development bill back.

We will see an infill um affordable housing bill back.

These were um brought to the legislature by former um Senator Brandus, uh, the honorable Senator Um the Honorable Jeff Brandis' think tank, and they will be back.

Um, it is imperative on all of our cities to read where the bills left off and to provide feedback to your local leagues so that I can so that we can then work with bill sponsors and um work with our league to work with the bill sponsors to make language that works for everyone.

This directly impacts height and density requirements, it will these will impact us.

The other bill that I that we anticipate seeing next year relates to doing more doing more with the um property tax.

As many of you know, the property tax bill was the governor's bill, and both of the bill sponsors respond responded over and over again that this was his bill, that they had other ideas.

They will be introducing additional um proposals next year to round out this property tax bill.

Should the property tax bill pass this year?

If the property tax bill does not pass, is not voted on by 60% of residents this year.

Um we'll probably see another proposal coming from the legislature again.

So it's incumbent on us to make their proposals better and more workable within the cities that we love and and govern.

And thank you all for the opportunity.

Thank you very much.

Okay, so with that, then we'll move um along, and we're gonna go to public comment.

And because I see several faces I don't recognize.

Let me just give you a quick overview.

Public comment.

You raise your hand, I call you up here, you come up and you state your name in the city that you reside in.

You have up to three minutes to say anything you want on anything that is not on the agenda.

Okay, um, and uh the besides that you can say what you want.

We don't boo or applaud at all, okay.

And if you want a response, be sure to either send follow up with an email or you can leave your uh information with our city clerk, and she'll make sure that we know that somebody's looking for a response.

It wasn't just a rhetorical question.

So who's first?

Don't be shy.

Hands up.

I saw you first.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Hello, my name's Captain Mark Hubbard, and uh thank you.

Uh mayor, city council, city manager.

Uh came come to you from uh the Gulf Beaches with the Hubbard family, Hubbard's marina.

We uh been working with the county for some uh with waterborne transportation for some time now.

And um I just wanted to let you know what we're up to and uh bring uh City of Gulfport up to speed with uh our initiative.

I do have some cards that uh I only have three of them, but uh they have a uh QR code you can scan to learn about some of one of the uh projects that we're working on with uh the city of St.

Petersburg.

The um we're working with Pinellas County PSTA implementing a full service cross Bay Ferry commuter service, transporttainment and commuters uh going across Tampa Bay.

You heard about the pilot program that we've had for some time.

So now it's going full service.

Uh we there's a lot of momentum with that service.

Uh the desire to increase the service to the beaches, Bradenton, uh the desired corridors going up to Tampa Bay Beaches in the intercoastal waterway.

That's where you all come in.

Um we'd love to see the city of Gulfport go back to its roots and support a ferry terminal on your waterfront, tapping into the momentum, the transportation and the possible uh well the transporttainment to the beaches and possibly working with uh PS Today to to develop a commuter service, tapping into the employers on the beaches.

A good way to uh get involved is to show up at the St.

Petersburg Waterborne Transportation Subcommittee meeting at the last Friday of each month at uh 9 a.m.

Uh you'll learn about what the county is doing, what the FDOT's doing, the Pinells Forward, and your neighboring cities.

Uh it's been um doing really well, gaining a lot of momentum, and um you could find your place in this uh initiative.

I hope you uh all and the residents uh decide to support waterborne transportation in the near future.

Um as you know, your history goes way back with waterborne transportation connecting to the Gulf Beaches, and uh we'd love to see that happen again in the new or the development and the redevelopment of the waterfront, uh being able to develop some kind of throughput terminal to tap into this.

So if you have any questions, I can answer them.

Otherwise, uh city.

Yeah, if you'll leave those with the city clerk, please.

Thank you.

For who wants the more information?

Any questions?

We don't do questions or public comment.

Thank you, Mr.

Freed, you were next.

Okay, Richard Freed, uh Tangerine Avenue.

Um, not sure I'm gonna be here Thursday, so I just wanted to talk about uh in brief, uh several different items.

First item being um the tax issue for uh uh uh homestead exemption, um what this really is about is insurance, right?

So we may save a dollar on our taxes, but we will be spending a dollar twenty-five on insurance.

So in the long run, it's gonna cost us more to live in Florida.

Um cost, uh you spoke briefly about utilities and utility contracts.

Are we uh piggybacking on the feasibility study in St.

Petersburg for the dump due campaign?

That's what I want to know to lower our logical costs.

Um, and uh I've made a personal decision about um my electoral view on things.

Um, I have decided that folks that I am going to be supporting electorally, one of their top three issues must be um rank choice voting, and open primaries.

If we align on every other issue, and those two items are not part of the top three in the platform.

I'm not voting for you, so and I see a day where I'm just not gonna vote because that's not gonna be part of your platform.

Um, um, in terms of DEI, uh, and we don't have representation, wondering how this council is going to bear the lack of funding, uh, because of our degree of progressiveness here in Gulfport.

Are you willing not to be funded for the senior center?

Because of the stance we take for diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Are we willing not to accept uh to receive funding for the library?

Tough choices ahead.

Um, and also I'm still awaiting for you to deputize uh the citizens.

Thank you very much.

Uh Ms.

Thanos, so April Thanis, I'm now on 53rd.

Um, a couple things.

Um, one, I was curious if we can have an update on um Ian and whether we've gotten any money.

And then I sent a letter to everybody, I mean an email, about I was so surprised when I was walking on shore, and I saw that we had put I mean artificial turf around the bottom of trees.

And it's environmentally terrible.

And I you know, it's come up before when we put it on some of the um exercise equipment areas, and that was really bad.

And then to have it come up again, and especially in an area that floods, and um and it breaks down and it's hot to walk on, and multiple reasons it's terrible, and so I'm really kind of surprised that we did that.

And then also, I understand we're not gonna have a trolley.

I that the chambers having a trolley in the Pride Parade in St.

Pete, but you know, since I've been here, we've always had the trolley go in the parade in St.

Pete, and I'm wondering why not.

If not, so those are it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Who's next?

Show of hands.

Mayor I would address that trial issue under our course.

I understand.

Show of hands.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Um, my name is Jonathan Oldsburg.

Um, I live on 46th Street South, and I've been had the pleasure of being in this room listening to lots of really important issues that address the whole city.

This is a super local matter that I'm going to raise, which relates to the area in which I live in Gulfport.

Um, and I appreciate the opportunity of raising this ultra-local issue.

Um, the issue is of currently very unusually severe street flooding in the area surrounding sort of the marina and 29th Avenue, 46th Street, 47th others.

Um I know the King Tide and High Tides are a major contributor for flooding, and I've discussed this in the past over the years with Tom Nicol and others, and clearly it's it's a fact of life here.

And I know also that um the plans that were put before us last November include hopefully getting some money to deal with that, but um, I think what's happening right now is very, very much worse than what we've experienced in the past.

The past few years, I've noticed you know the level of flooding that takes place and extends.

What's happening right now is at least happening for twice as long in the day as what used to be the case.

Um the water is certainly twice as deep as it ever was, and as far as I can tell, the impacts are around many more streets and avenues than it used to be.

Um I know that when public works department is engaging with this and through Vice Mayor Shaw, we've been in touch with them, that they immediately refer to King Tide as being the well, I don't know if they've said the main contributing factor.

I suspect they think it is, and that's the position that they will have.

But I would really encourage them and urge them to go beyond just accepting King Tides as the problem here, because clearly, in my view, and the view of my neighbors, something has deteriorated since last year when this was happening in the system, and um addressing it has become a matter of great urgency.

Again, I appreciate the opportunity of raising this very local matter, but it's marvelous that that you do offer residents the chance to do so.

Thank you very much.

Who's next?

Yes.

Hello, my name is Mary Atkinson DeAngelis, and I am a former resident of Gulfport when we moved here.

And I just wanted to thank all of you for the honor you've given my father.

Recognizing what he has done, he and my mom and all that and my aunt and all that they've done through these years here in Gulfport.

It's a great town.

Uh many of us have moved away, but we come back because we realize what is happening through it, and we appreciate all that you all are doing.

It's that you continue to keep the spirit of Gulfport alive, and we we really do thank you.

And uh look forward to many more people joining my dad.

I'm sure Town Shores has a couple, um, but anyway, thank you again.

We do appreciate everything, and uh just keep up doing the good work, okay?

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Okay, before I close public comment.

anybody else seeing none?

Do we have any e-comments?

I do have two uh public e-comments.

I do believe one of them is it references a uh 7C.

So I don't know if you want me to read that during that one.

No, hold that for seven C if you would.

Okay.

So I have one uh open public comment from Gulfport resident Margaret Margaret Tober.

Would you please explain why the late charges for utility accounts are five percent of the monthly unpaid balance?

Yet marine accounts are a flat fee of 15 dollars.

The differences become quite significant once the balance exceeds 300.

Is the money is a the cost of money different for the two different AR portfolios.

Also, why are so many active marina accounts passed due?

Some haven't made a payment in a year or more, and some have been turned over to attorney salzman more than a year ago, and it appears there have been no updates.

Net net one group of customers is being showing being shown favoritism over the other.

That's the only one I have.

That's it, all righty.

With that, then we will close public comment and we will go to the city manager report, please.

Mayor, two items this evening.

One I'd like to invite Justin Shea up to explain how we're working with the merchants to provide the trolley for the pride parade.

Go ahead, Justin.

We uh the city of Gulfport received a request from the Gulfport Merchants Chamber to put the special events trolley in the St.

Pete Pride Parade.

Usually the request um there's direction provided to the city manager, and then the city manager delegates that task for the city to enter the vehicle into the parade in St.

Petersburg.

Unfortunately, I don't have the large scale trolley, so we have the looper, but the request would be permission to bring the looper outside of the city limits of Gulfport to provide the support to the merchants on uh June 27th.

Um question, where why don't we have the trolley?

Why my uh class C uh commercial drivers licensed uh employee has taken uh leave, so he's out uh for the month.

So that's a reasonable.

We have a backup in the event staff department that is able to drive the looper.

Okay, and just to confirm, we've always had just one vehicle in the um I think sometimes we've had the fire truck in it too.

Am I right?

Or no, okay.

So we've always just had one vehicle.

Fire truck's in the middle.

We just can't put the bigger one in the in this time of day.

We have to go to the smaller one.

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you for clarifying.

Is there an event that people won't be able to be picked up with a looper in town?

Not on that day.

Okay, we're driving the looper this Saturday for the third Saturday, the parade's on the fourth.

Um, and uh the courtesy does get extended um for the city council to have a C plus one.

There's 12 seats on the looper, so the merchants have two seats as well.

So we're supporting the brand in the St.

Pete Pride Parade.

Great.

That's great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I have that consensus to participate.

Yes, please.

Thank you.

And the second item, uh Mayor, is the city attorney and I have met with representatives respectively of the Boca City Yacht Club and also the Gulfport Yacht Club, and to start preliminary discussions in regards to the renewing their leases.

What we've advised both groups to do is to proceed with obtaining their as required by the charter change, obtain their appraisal, the fair market value of the cost of renting the building because we have to establish if there's an affordability issue or anything to that effect.

The city attorney is advised that you know that it was masks about some other aspects of it, about renewals and things to that effect, and his interpretation is that to follow the letter of the charter change residents voted, and that's what's in place.

And we've asked them to in the in the question it was that they would obtain the uh appraisal.

Yes, and do we do you know that the actual dates for the expiration of both leases on the top of your head?

Um I believe one is at the end of this month and one is in August.

So that it bogs in no report to get the appraisals.

Okay, thank you.

Anything else?

No, that's all I have.

Okay.

City attorney.

Mayor Council, I sent you the uh proposed policy censure policy.

Uh I received one response well, some questions.

Um, Vice Mayor and I uh had some discussions on it, and uh the one change I've made is in the last section, which will say that the council shall provide first-time violators with a written warning.

Um so we added that section.

If council should okay, then I would ask that we put it on to vote at your next meeting.

Yes, yes, okay.

Yes, yes.

That's all I have, Mayor.

All righty, uh city clerk.

You have a report?

Excuse me, Mayor.

Uh, I just have one quick inquiry regarding you guys.

Did set the policy for the workshop to be the first Thursday of each month.

So I just want to before I put out my calendar, just want to confirm if you would like to have that meeting on July 2nd.

I do believe City of Manager O'Reilly has suggested a workshop later in the month.

I'm happy to do both, but I want to make sure that I advertise them correctly.

I had that under new business for myself for tonight, so exactly that that we would um address the fact did we want a workshop for July 2nd and for August 6th.

Correct, yes, ma'am.

Or either of those dates.

So can we um ponder that for the next few minutes and when I bring it up in New Business?

Respond at that time.

Yes.

Mayor, I have a clarifying question.

Did you say the city manager wants a workshop later in July?

I think we had talked about August 4th or 6th.

Yeah, you could do it in August, the first week in August.

What we have is a situation that the city is closed on observe observation, observing the 4th of July on the 3rd.

And you're gonna have a workshop on this Thursday.

Is there a topic and such as you move forward?

You could do July if you wanted to reload reschedule something from early July, you could do in later July due to the holiday, or you could wait till your first meeting first Thursday in August.

And those would be a budget presentation.

Do we have a topic slightly uh I think I brought up the I know I brought up the boats situation, but that can I would ask for the topic as well.

Okay, so we don't have something unless we have something planned.

I don't that I'm not aware of.

Okay, we don't have any workshops scheduled right now, so I think she's just trying to get us to not to forget because like we didn't get one for early June because we weren't used to thinking like that.

So now we are so the two dates in question are July 2nd and August 6th.

So ponder that a little bit and we'll come back to that before the night is out.

Okay, all righty.

Um with that, then we will um if let me just say one thing I didn't say earlier in the meeting, but is important.

We're like an echo chamber in here, so when there's other conversations, we hear everything, and it's distracting.

So I always say if you need to have a conversation, please do it in the hallway.

But I know that can't always happen, but you know, I'm just wanted to say, well, as we're giving them we were quiet listening to y'all, and now vice versa.

So we're gonna move on to council comments and reports, and we'll do that in speaking orders, starting with council member early.

Okay, um, I don't have any Juneteenth posters left.

I think I've handed them all out, but this Friday, Timelinson Park.

I think it's 6 p.m.

to 9 p.m.

So it's later on where it could be a little bit cooler.

5 30.

5 30.

Thank you, Mayor Love.

Um, please join.

It'll be um it's gonna be a nice night.

Thank you.

Councilmember Dodge.

So I went to I volunteered for Pride last week, and the organizations that organized that event did an incredible job.

It was so well run.

I volunteered in the morning helping with all the vendors come in and get set up.

They knew exactly where to go when they pulled up, they knew exactly who to talk to.

So it went really well, and I congratulate them on that uh great event.

And Saturday, um, some of those same organizers are also having another event um at Pegasus Plaza on 49th.

So while we're you know getting out of downtown a little bit for Friday, let's do it on Saturday too, and um head over and have some summer fun over on 49th.

That's all I got.

Alrighty, thank you.

Councilmember Shaw.

Well, I'd love to be celebrating all the great things in Gulfport like I do.

Um I promised to do a report on the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council's resiliency summit.

Um, since it's nine pages long because it was two full days.

Um, I'm just going to give a little highlight summary, and everyone can then go to the website when it's posted if you're interested in reading it or seeing the headers that might pique your interest.

So, first I'd like to say thank you so much for the privilege of attending the sixth annual Tampa Bay Regional Resiliency Summit in May.

And I, and I just explained I prepared a longer summary.

Uh, the summit brought together emergency managers, engineers, university researchers, farmers, financiers, nonprofit leaders, and local elected officials from across the region.

33 government entities are now part of the Tampa Bay Regional Resiliency Compact, and it continues to grow, and the depth of collaboration on display was truly impressive.

Let me start with something close to home for all of us, hurricane preparedness, including small businesses.

It started with the council developing a program called Project Phoenix, a scenario-based training that walks through a simulated category five hurricane hitting Tampa Bay, then guides them through recovery decisions at one day, one week, one to six months, and one year out.

Admittedly, the visual simulation was powerful, even emotional, as it is all real to us.

The message and sobering statistics supported that preparation is key.

On the funding and finance side, one of the panels reported how communities are moving beyond grant dependency toward investment-ready resilience financing, for example.

St.

Pete has structured its stormwater utility fees and is now using AI to assess impervious surface areas more efficiently.

Fort Lauderdale restructured its stormwater fees to shift more costs to commercial properties and earned a triple A bond rating as a result.

A nonprofit finance institution shared that they're leveraging $11 in private capital for every one dollar in public funding.

The message was that there are creative ways to fund resiliency work, and the communities doing it well are thinking in layers, grants, bridge financing, and long-term bonds working together.

Not all options are necessarily viable for Gulfport, but again, presented the importance of not only focusing on grants.

This felt particularly relevant given the conversations we're having right now about property tax reform.

Several panelists flagged serious concern about eliminating or significantly reducing property taxes and what that would do to local government's ability to fund work.

One of the most visually striking presentations was about real-time flood sensor networks.

Lee County built a hyperlocal network of flood sensors, and during Hurricane Milton, one of those sensors survived a direct tornado hit on a bridge and kept sending data.

Emergency managers were tracking water levels street by street and real time.

They were able to redirect redirect a reporter away from the flooded road.

They were able to protect county vehicles, and now they have a baseline data set for future flood modeling that they simply didn't have before.

Another topic that isn't talked about as much in the context of disaster planning is a conversation about food system resilience.

Feeding Tampa Bay distributed 100 million meals last year.

One in four million children in our region experienced food insecurity.

After the 2024 storms, local food production was significantly disrupted, and there was no rapid coordination mechanism in place to get generators to farmers or redistribute surplus food quickly.

There's real momentum now around building that infrastructure and around connecting local food production to health care systems through a new 5% local food sourcing mandate.

Finally, and I found this one very interesting, and by the way, not finally as far as the two days, but Kings Bay and Crystal River is being restored through a combination of seagrass replanting, spring vent reopening, and innovative hybrid reef structures that reduce storm surge impact by up to 90%.

Over 80 million pounds of algae and debris have been removed, 120 acres of seagrass has been restored, and those restored beds held through the multiple hurricane seasons.

It's a powerful reminder that when we invest in natural systems, they pay us back.

Last year, my main takeaway is that we need to learn live with to live with water.

A focus of this summit was innovation.

There was so much more in the two days of sessions that I've highlighted innovative approaches, augmented reality tools for visualizing storm surge, agro voltaques, combining solar and farming, county-by-county lessons learned from Helene and Melton, and a rich conversation about affordable housing recovery.

I've written it up in a summary, as I stated before, and what I walked away believing more firmly than ever is that resiliency isn't a single project, it's a mindset.

The communities making progress are ones that have decided to commit to readiness and resiliency.

The work ahead for us calls for all of us to stay engaged, stay creative, stay innovative as we build on our strengths and deepen the resiliency of our community.

Thank you for bearing with me in hearing that.

But again, I saved you from nine pages.

Thank you.

Very good.

Is that it?

Nothing.

Okay.

All righty.

Councilmember Webb, please.

Sure, thank you, Mayor.

I am honored to serve as our representative on the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council.

I attended my first meeting last Monday.

And uh the Project Phoenix that Vice Mayor Shaw mentioned, they're having their last tabletop exercise webinar this next Friday, so June 26th from 12 to 1 p.m.

So if you're interested in seeing warning, it simulates a category five, and it wasn't that long ago that a lot of us were underwater.

So it was really emotional when they showed it to the elected officials.

You could tell the ones who lived on the barrier islands or in Gulfport and the ones who I don't know lived in Kenneth City or elsewhere because there was a real difference in how we responded to it.

You don't have to watch the video, you can join later.

What they really emphasized for us is the importance of small businesses, our brick and mortars particularly, in preparing for extreme storms and storms that take out bridges and things like that.

And that's a very good exercise, not only for our small businesses, and we can build on what we did well last time and coming together in the immediate aftermath to inform how to how to be more resilient in the face of the future storm, but also for residents and to make sure that I mean here's and they echoed this.

If you can't pitch in, then you're gonna then you're gonna be taking resources from people who need to be going elsewhere.

And so really have that evacuation plan, have your hurricane kit, have your important documents all together.

June 1st was the launch of hurricane season.

Kind of think what else.

Oh, the blueprint 2030 halftime report highlights um statewide progress towards economic and quality of life goals, and our regional planning council and our region was really um kind of like benchmarking and being leaders in a lot of the um and a lot of the metrics that were used.

And this is really important because this is about not only, I think we all think of the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council as the resiliency summit, but they do economic regional economic development as well and all sorts of other things.

We heard from the Chamber of Commerce.

So these are things our regional plan builds towards a more resilient, economically resilient and robust um region, a more resilient environmental, environmentally resilient region, and so scoring well on this is very important.

And finally, we are already preparing for the next census.

This is very important for drawing down money.

It was estimated that our region lost billions over the last 10 years because we were had an because of the undercount that existed, and so they're already recruiting people to help with census coordination.

So that's from the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council.

From my Gulfport Elementary Enthusiast group, we did a tour, we did we had we were active this week.

We toured the elementary school, the fantastic core.

So the Gulfport Elementary Enthusiasts is a group of parents and community members committed to developing and acknowledging excellence in public education.

Inspired by efforts of school board member Hein and her neighbors and promoting North Shore, we have begun our work of meeting with the principal, superintendents of schools, and school board members.

Based on these conversations, we are rallying our neighbors to join us in sharing the outstanding strides happening at Gulfport Elementary and in bragging about Principal Zeller and her team, who we are lucky to have leading our schools and students.

The timing is important because Pinellas County School Board is in the middle of redistricting our schools.

So for the first time in a generation, all of the students in Gulfport would have the opportunity of going to school with one another at Gulfport Elementary School.

If we want a thriving and potentially even a K through eight elementary school where all of our children can go and learn and grow together, please get involved.

This is our opportunity.

Contact me directly.

My email is J Webb at MyGulfport.com.

Also mark your calendars for July 9th at 6 p.m.

at Boca Siega High School.

Pinellas County Schools will be hosting planning for Pinellas, a community listening session at where all community members are welcome to provide their feedback to Pinellas County schools regarding what our what we want for our school and our school system moving forward.

It's a great opportunity.

You don't have to have kids in the school system.

This is an opportunity for all of us to show our support.

We met with Superintendent Hendrick today, and he was very impressed that myself and the city manager took time to go out there to meet with him to say that we support our elementary school and that our elementary school is very important to us.

They are consolidating schools right now.

There are a lot of schools in the south side of the county.

The more we show our support, the stronger our bid for keeping our school open and our students together.

Thanks, y'all.

Thanks, Mayor.

Thank you.

So since our last meeting, I did attend another Ford Pinellus meeting.

And I know I feel like I'm talking to you all the time about the merging of the different planning organizations, and that continues.

But this time I asked a question like what's the time frame on this?

And best case scenario is probably 2028.

So this is not imminent.

But I will say is being sitting on the board and being an observer, it seems to me it's getting more political because now I'm starting to learn more and more about why there's actual infighting between big cities and the counties, and they don't see eye to eye necessarily.

So it's getting interesting.

A couple of things I thought would interest you all is uh they talked about the um jobs in Pinellas County, and I didn't ever know this before, so I wanted to tell you.

So the greatest percentage of jobs in Pinellas County fall under professional and building service at 17.71%.

Very close behind is education and health care at 17.51%.

And then they made a point of saying that while manufacturing is down in Pinellas County over the last 20 years, that's the time period they're looking at, it's still considered very strong at 7.6% or approximately 34,000 jobs in our county.

The second thing is very um uh not encouraging.

They gave us an update on fatal crashes in our city.

I don't have the breakdown between you know pedestrian vehicle and motorcycle.

But in 2025, we had 43 fatal accidents.

Okay, we are currently at 30 in our county.

And I will say this that the biggest increase is with motorcycles, without a doubt.

Also from Ford Pinellas, I became aware that currently, because more and more of us are aware of bicycle pedestrian accidents and the need for safety with our bicycles.

Okay, says somebody who's not wearing a helmet all the time.

So if anybody thinks that they'd like to sit on that with Ford Pinellas, please let me know.

Then, as you know, as based on the two previous reports, everybody's talking about hurricane preparedness right now.

So I actually attended the webinar through the Florida Department of Emergency Management, and the messaging was pretty clear.

It says, he what he really harped on is every single business needs to be prepared for themselves for the first 72 hours at what they call the homeowner level.

So you have to figure out what are you going to do for 72 hours because that's what they're estimating is how long it'll take for the state to converge in here with all the things that they can offer us.

It was also made very, very clear that the state will be calling the shots.

DeSantis, and then the state will be calling the shots, not the federal government.

Don't look to them for any assistance.

Florida is expecting to be affected by hurricanes this year.

We don't know where it's going to happen, but again, they're looking at the whole state, okay, and they are asking for every single one of you out there in the seats right now to make sure you have a plan in place that you are prepared for at least five days without electricity.

Okay.

They did change the way they're going to show some of the graphics now, whereas they used to always show the cone of where they thought the hurricanes would hit, and they kind of stayed along the coastline.

They're changing all that now so that the cone is going to continue all the way inland because as we've learned, you know, in recent years, is that so much of the inland actually floods after the storms, could be two, three days, and they experience a flooding.

So they're going to do a better job of informing the folks that are not necessarily on the coast.

He also made me aware of something I didn't know, which is that we have to always be on the lookout for tornadoes on the front end.

I did not know, but Florida ranks number four in the number of hurricanes.

I mean, tornadoes.

I'm trying to talk about tornadoes.

I did not know that.

So I'm saying uh what have you done?

I'm asking each one of you to ask yourself, what have you done at this point to prepare?

Okay, generators, fuel, batteries, plywood.

Do you know your evacuation zone, your evacuation route?

Okay.

For any of you that are challenged or disabled, what's your mode of transportation to evacuate?

Where are you going?

Are they going to accept your pets?

Have you closed your permit since the last storms?

Okay.

These are all things that you should be figuring out now, not when we know that there's one coming and we're within seven days.

So please think about it.

I'm working on my list already of getting everything done and starting up that generator, making sure it works.

And then the last thing I wanted to say was the 4th of July.

For those of you that don't know, we have really a good hometown family celebration.

It starts right here at City Hall with the opening of a time capsule from 1976.

Okay, we're going to open that at 9 a.m.

At 10 o'clock, we'll start um staging for the parade, which will be up in the Tomlinson area, incorporating tangerine.

All right, try and get your seat in the uh shade if you can.

Um also we will then have um the the city will be providing hot dogs soft drinks uh for you, and we're encouraging you to bring your table and chairs and any side items that you particularly like to eat because we want you all to stay and either participate or watch our family games.

We're gonna have good old-fashioned family games like uh the three-legged race and the egg in the spoon race.

Um and we're gonna have different heats.

So we're actually going to have an adult heat and an adult and child, and then we'll have breakdown the children's categories into two different heats.

So I'm hoping that everyone out there is going to participate one way or the other.

So I hope that you will join us, and then of course, you should be time to just get in a short nap and then you'll head downtown for the fireworks.

Okay, so that's all I have, and we can move on to consent, please.

And we will take a break right after consent for five minutes, okay?

Thank you.

Excuse me, consent item six A, consider approval of meeting minutes from meeting held June second, twenty twenty-six and item six B resolution number twenty twenty-six-thirty-eight, a resolution formally supporting the efforts of Pinellas County Schools in the course of its planning for progress rezoning to draw attendance zone boundaries that assign every grid within the city of Gulfport to the Gulfport Elementary School Zone.

I'll make a motion to adopt both uh 6B and 6A.

Second.

All those in favor?

I any opposed passes unanimously.

Okay, I've got seven eleven, so we're gonna resume at seven sixteen.

Thank you.

I'll address ordinances.

Moving on to item seven A, ordinance number 2026-04.

Excuse me.

One person.

Thank you.

Ordinance number 2026-04, second reading and public hearing.

An ordinance of the city of Gulfport, Florida, amending the City of Gulfport code of ordinances, amending chapter 22 zoning, Article 6, supplementary regulations for all districts by amending section 22-6.03, accessory uses and structures to accessory uses and structures, excluding accessory dwelling units and by adding section 22-6.15 accessory dwelling units, ADUs, providing for applicability, providing for definitions, providing for general standards, providing for development standards, use and occupy requirements, providing for parking requirements, providing for administration approval, providing of your ADU ordinance.

Ms.

Griffith, Miss Fisher here this evening for codification, several ability, and for an effective date.

If you have any additional questions, council did approve this on first reading.

Right.

And there's been no changes made since the first reading.

Exactly.

Okay.

Does anybody on council have any questions?

No questions.

No.

So when I was reading through it again to remind myself, it said that we will not allow for building in the CHJ, and I thought that we had discussed it, but that that wasn't determined that we would not allow it unless it was.

We have it, Statement.

Correct.

The draft still states that it will not be allowed in the CHAJ.

Okay.

So are we saying that it's not allowed then or that we're gonna maybe change the later if it needs to be?

So what happened that night was that we did not have a definitive answer whether it would um affect the ratings.

So what we said is for us to say at this point it doesn't, is okay and we get that approved.

If in fact we get the answer to that question later and it wouldn't affect the NFIP, then it's okay to come back and be more lenient, but we can't say it's okay and then come back and be more strict.

So my question was did we get that answer that we actually have it in there or no?

We have not as yet.

Okay, but we do know that we do have points for not allowing it now.

Uh you do have points for more stringent land development regulations in the coastal high hazard area.

We we're trying to get more information about the exact point structure and whether allowing ABUs would be enough to affect that score.

Okay, and if we added something somewhere else to make up for that, like adding an extra photo free board or something somewhere else in our CR report, um, maybe we could make up for that and allow the loss of points, like we probably don't get all of the points, so maybe the loss of points can be made up somewhere else.

That's one of the questions that we would love to ask FEMA if they would ever call us back, okay.

Okay, does anybody else have any questions for Mark or Linda?

No, no, alrighty.

Thank you.

Um public comment on this issue.

Any comment on this issue?

Not on this, not on seven eight.

All right, seeing none, then call the vote.

Councilmember Early?

Yes.

Council Member Donch?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Shaw?

Yes.

Council Member Webb, yes.

Mayor Love?

Yes.

Passes unanimously.

Moving on to item 7B, ordinance number 2026-06.

First reading.

An ordinance of the City of Gulfport, Florida, amending chapter 15, pensions, Article 6, retirement system for city employees of the code of ordinances of the city of Gulfport, amending section 15-9-1 definitions, providing for codification, providing for severability of provisions, repealing all ordinances and conflict here with, and providing an effective date.

Motion to approve, second.

City manager.

Mayor, um, the next these three ordinances basically address the same issue that's arisen with it was brought to our attention by the pension trustees and the respective boards that the counting of workers' comp time towards your service time and clarifying that.

I want to recognize Shannon.

In fact, ask her to come up.

She's done a great job of managing the three pension plans as they had issues, and this is all brought to us through the pension plans, and they've provided their attorneys have provided language to make the correction.

You want to go ahead?

Yep, so um there is a clarifying uh definition from our previous uh pension attorney to our new pension attorney.

So these are gonna kind of clarify how the accredited service is defined.

Uh previously, it was the accredited service was based off of um like your anniversary date.

If there's no break in employment, that is your credit service.

That's how we um process retirements uh with the new pension attorney, they say the credited service is based off contributions uh being submitted from the employee employee and the employer.

So while an employee is on workers' comp, they're being paid directly from workers' comp, not through the city.

So that's when there's a little break in the contributions being made.

So they're trying to clarify what counts as credited service.

If that makes any kind of sense.

Actually, I think you put that in that shell very, very well.

Much easier to comprehend than trying to read the two.

Yeah, get it from there.

But I think you did very good.

Does anyone have any questions for her?

I have a clear hippie.

So are we asking that they do count?

So right now we have been saying credited services based off the date.

But uh the pension attorney, the new one saying she reads it as based off contributions.

So we're going to try to match the ordinance to what we're currently doing, unless you want to follow what she interprets the ordinance is by saying if there is a break in pension contributions, that does not count as credited service, so they're pretty much have to tack it on when they come back to work to receive their qualifying years.

Okay, thank you.

Okay.

Will that continue to discussion after?

Right?

Yeah, like we're not having discussion right now.

Okay.

I don't know if I don't have this last time we didn't have discussion, we just had questions.

Will you open this up for questions?

Absolutely.

Discussion after.

Okay.

I think you can have a discussion, and we'll go in speaking order on that too.

So I just want to make sure I understand.

So right now it goes by date of employment.

And what we're opening up is just having it count by contributions only, right?

Which would put someone that has workers' comp.

So we have other ways.

So right now it's based off the years from when they're hired if there's no break in employment, but the dates.

Um but now they're wanted to clarify they're reading the ordinance as it's based off your contributions being made, and if there's a break in that, then that does not count towards your accredited service into your vesting period.

So if you're out on workers' comp, it will not count towards five or ten years, whatever the vesting period is.

It was necessary.

Thank you.

So I um agree with the new um, what's the new way that they're trying to say it?

I think that it should be based on contributions.

Um I think that determining other things with time of service from date of hire, like seniority for vacation bids or things like that, it's important to start with your start date.

But if you're not contributing, then I think that you should be considered as not contributing during that amount of time.

Only when to me reading it, um it says while you're on workers' comp, which continues throughout the course of maybe an injury that might be more significant.

So if you were in an accident and you have to keep going to the doctor, you would still be on workers' comp.

So to me, um, if you are off on workers' comp, like you're solely being paid, and all of your benefit is coming from workers' comp, then that should not be considered towards your retirement.

Um you're not contributing to your retirement, so you shouldn't consider that time as contributing towards your retirement.

Um for everything else, fine, but um if you're not contributing to it during that time, then I don't think that that should be considered for your um time of service.

So maybe if the language was just changed to say that, just during that whatever time that it is that you're off on that time only, not through the rest of it, because I know that we could consider you being on workers' comp even later.

So off on workers comp, I think is when you should not be considered for retirement.

If that uh workers is clear, so like when you get injured, if you get injured, let's say you're in a car accident, right?

And you cannot go to work, um, so you are off work, you will then get your payment from workers' comp only.

It doesn't come from the city.

So you're not getting paid from the city, they're not contributing on your behalf, you are not contributing to the retirement.

Oh, yeah.

Can we do that?

Yeah, so um, so that's how that's how your contributions work.

So just during that time, when you're off on it's not leave, but when you're off injured on workers' comp, you're not contributing to your retirement, so I don't think that that should be considered towards retirement.

And then when you're back, you're on light duty or whatever for any amount of time that you're you know back working um for the city and you're collecting your city pay and you're contributing again, then yes, that should be when your time starts again.

Councilmember Shaw.

So I I hear what you're saying, but but there's a specific case in point two that we're trying to be clear on, and that is, for example, this particular employee was on worker comp for an extended period of time.

He did work, you know, he did serve light duty, he did actually come in and work, and he was counting on that time, timing out his 10 years so he could retire at the end of those 10 years, and by not considering how to resolve that, then this person will be required to, I guess, work another year.

Is that what I'm hearing?

Six months.

I'm sorry.

I'd rather not get into specific employees.

Okay, yeah, yeah.

Okay, fair enough.

Well, I mean, I don't think you want to address the ordinance for this is for one person.

This is a this is a ordinance that is presented by the pension plan.

That is an entity onto itself.

How we it's a very generic situation.

This is not can we do this for this?

The problem it lies in.

Yes, do we we're all familiar with the issue, but I have to ask you to address it as that issue did not exist, because you're trying the the proposal is in front of you.

I'll address that.

Okay, is by the pension plan because they're exposed they're presenting this to you because of the exposure that you're facing.

The pension plan is exposed to.

Can you define an exposure just the payouts?

The plan actually sustains itself, other than the city's contribution and the employees' contribution to sell the pension.

Once you go off the quit contributing and you retire, you were then on the plan, you were a burden on the plan, so to speak.

You were collecting proceeds that have been invested to make it actually sound throughout the process.

So I think Ari, if if the goal here is to address one issue, this is what as Shannon spoke of.

This is a legal interpretation that previous plan attorney identified it one way, the new one applied it this way.

We're trying to keep our audiences consistent with what the the interpretation that we're receiving from the plan attorneys.

Enough said, so it's okay.

I understand that we're not trying to just address one, but there are examples like that, and that's what I'm trying to weigh into it to understand.

Because I under I started out by saying I hear what she was saying, but then I'm also looking at these other possibilities.

So I'm trying to figure out where to go from there.

Okay, because I thought I was clear on it.

Yeah, and what it does, very I'm gonna Channy, you want to you do it clear very clearly.

I could tell you what it does.

Basically, if you're not as counseling red dots spoke of, you're not making a payment, you're not an active participant in the plan.

If you're making a payment, either yourself or the city on your behalf, then you are part of the plan.

Are you talking about currently or what is proposed?

What is proposed?

Shannon.

Currently, currently it is based off if there's no break in employment dates.

That is how we've always done it.

This situation was a little different to the one that you guys received the letter about.

Strictly because they're looking to leave right at the 10-year mark.

So for general employees, for example, our vesting periods only five years.

Typically, someone's not here just for five years or wanting to retire and being on workers' comp all in one nice little bubble.

So typically, if a general employee has had workers' comp and they were out for three or four months, but they were employed for 15 16 years, it's not gonna matter that time because they've already exceeded that vesting period.

The situation that uh council member Shaw is talking about, is because it's right at the 10-year mark, which we'll have to based off how we how you guys feel tonight, the ordinance is gonna go one way or the other.

Um does this happen a lot.

This is the first time in the 10 years that I've been here that this has happened.

So is it a huge?

There's no financial impact, you have those letters, it's more of a clarification of how you want to address my job moving forward, how I'm gonna process uh the retirees and when someone is vested.

Yes, I have one question for you.

If somebody's being compensated through workmen's comp, they can make contributions into the retirement if they choose to.

Is that the case or is that not the case?

That was a loaded question.

We were going round and round, um, because you wouldn't the city would typically it's based off your working hours.

There's a certain percentage of and your rate of pay of how the pension contributions are made.

We run it through payroll, there's reporting, especially for the audit, how when the pension plans get audited, how we have reports for your working hours, your pension contributions.

Could an employee we could try to make a create a policy?

Not saying we can't do it, we've never done it in the past for the employee to make their contributions.

Would you want the city to make their the contributions on on but based off what their average weekly wage that they're getting paid through workers' comp, because there's no way for me to run that through any kind of payroll process because we are not paying them.

I don't see their check, I don't see how much they're making through workers' comp every week.

So, how would I determine what amount to contribute for them being out?

Yes.

I decided to I create the 13, the average weekly wage statement, but I know they have caps depending on if the employee how much they're making on their average weekly wage.

There is a cap on a weekly amount.

So but every employee is different.

We have part-timers, we have full-timers, we have you're paid 66 and two thirds.

That's what I thought.

For the 13 weeks prior to the date of the accident.

Correct.

That's what I thought.

So you could calculate it.

Well, that's how they calculate it.

Remember, they get there's no taxes taken off the compensation rate because it's at 66 and two-thirds.

But when I so when we make the pension payment, we have a payroll report that we run so we can show what we're paying and why we're paying that.

So I would have to I could work get with workers' comp and try to get a statement and get with Salem Trust, we make the payment to it how and I'd have to figure out how to run it through our system for our financials.

I mean, the pol I'm sorry, the policy you would probably want to adopt would be after a certain period of time, right?

Because we wouldn't want to do this every time somebody goes out on workers' comp because it could be for a couple weeks, versus when somebody starts going off after you know 90 days or something like that, then the issue comes as to contributions, right?

Um, to make sure that that they would be able to do it so that you'd probably want to look into that kind of policy.

Quick question.

So, how is there no financial impact?

If it seems like it would impact there would be if nobody's paying into the system and the person isn't and the city isn't.

So, how they comp uh calculate your pension once you hit retirement, they take the highest of your of your five years.

So, this the year that this person would not be contributing, it would not be included in their highest five years to calculate their pension benefit.

Okay, thanks.

And if you did want to open the can of worms of having the employee and the employer um making their pension contributions, you know.

I do to Councilmember Donch's point of them not actually being here.

Do you can't again?

Are you gonna pay someone their pension contributions for working average when they're not working?

That's and workers' comp, just for clarification for those of us up here, can be tapped into what are the conditions by which a worker can um apply for workers' comp.

So accident or injury arising out of the course of the scope of employment, not going or coming from I've practiced workers' comp for like 30 years.

Read the statute, too.

So uh this is why we pay for it.

Right.

So it's uh unless you're going or coming.

Right.

Um, and so it's you know, the whole idea behind workers' comp is I get hurt on the job, you're not gonna punish me financially, and that's why you're not taxing me on that rate, and you're gonna pay for any doctors or treatment that I need that's related and bring you back to work.

I mean, that's the whole idea behind it.

So that's how you can't sue us.

Um, so we provide you these benefits.

We're supposed to provide them automatically.

And a lot of time we do bring it back on light duty, so it's not like they're gone for years at a time on workers' comp.

We we do have a very good way of getting all the directors help me out a lot by offering light duty for employees when I have them based on their restrictions and what they can and cannot be doing.

I personally feel more comfortable being consistent with the advice given by our attorney and her interpretation.

I think that we end up going out on a limb if we decide that we're not taking the advice of someone who practices this like this area of law for a living, and we think that we know better than them.

Um, and so for that reason, just let me say we're not saying we know better.

We're saying that the first attorney told us one thing, and he's no longer our attorney, he passed away.

Right, but we have a new attorney, by the way.

And her and her right, just but I didn't want you to think we were doing it wrong before.

No, I don't think no, I just think that it's important to she wants to make it match.

She wants to mirror what we're doing to what it says in the ordinance, so she right, she wants us one way or the other either do it as credited time or do it for actual payments.

Yes.

She just only wants us to be consistent, so if we don't change the ordinance, it'll be based off your the contributions.

And if we do change it, then it'll be based off the years, okay.

Right.

So it's whichever you want, we're just gonna be consistent one way or the other.

Right.

Tell me what to do.

We don't change it.

You guys can say no.

Vote it, you know.

We don't have second reading, we don't want to do that.

Wouldn't we then open ourselves up to like if somebody's injured themselves and is received while on duty and is receiving workers' comp, and you're not supposed to be punitive against someone who has been injured on the job, this feels punitive to me that we're then saying, oh, but you have to everybody else gets to work 10 years, but you have to work 10 years and six months or 11 years because you're on extended medical leave.

Well, if you go, I'm sorry, but you go back to the point of you didn't break, you know, you're getting credit for what you do, you worked for the your employer, right?

Right.

If I'm on workers' comp, I'm not working for my employer.

Now, if I'm doing light duty, yes, right, I am, but it I think that's really your employer.

If I'm sitting at home, no fault of mine or anybody's for six months, I'm not doing anything for my employer, I'm getting workers' comp.

You're not getting anything.

You want, you know, you mean the employee, you want the city to pay for your time when you're not working.

That's the question.

But not every case is warranted a workers' comp case.

So I think that it's not everyone can just say, hey, listen, I'm not gonna I I right, you know what I mean.

I agree with that.

I just think that if you get hurt at work, it's literally adding insult to injury by saying you can't retire when you plan on retiring.

That's what so I just didn't mean it.

And just remember the other thing is we don't control anything that goes on with the pension.

So pension benefits are all done by them, right?

All the city's only obligation is to fund it, and if there's a shortfall, the city funds it.

So that's the only aspect that the city has.

So we have all the liability and none of the control, right, right.

Yeah, right.

Any other discussion up here?

Public comment?

Yes, Mr.

Freed.

If an employee gets hurt at work, then it's a work-related issue.

It's not like they come to work and they got into an accident.

Okay.

It's part of the social contract.

Okay.

So hope you vote this one down, folks.

It's gonna be hell to pay.

What's that?

I can't talk to you.

Any other public comment on this?

Yes, please.

Oh, I can tell you're excited to say something on this one.

My name is Rebecca Dean, and I live on 59th Street in Gulfport, Florida, and uh it's a great place to live.

Um not everybody has the experience of having a pension and being on uh uh workman's comp.

I did.

Um, I also had sick time that was available to me, and I was um unemployed essentially for three months and um and had to relearn how to walk.

I fell off a ladder.

Um, the workman's comp paid 66 and a third percent.

My sick time vacation time paid for the other 33 and a third percent, and I don't know how any anything else happens.

Um, and um, yeah, so I didn't miss a beat.

Uh I felt very well helped uh on that incident, and um yeah, it's nice to be able to have a pension also, which the pension is also based off your best five years.

So if you miss three months or six months, I'm not sure that that would really make that much of a difference in a five year span.

So just kind of a layman's understanding of what happened to me.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else for public comment?

I think we have an e-comment on this.

No, we don't, it's at seven, okay.

Thank you.

All righty, well, Mayor, to clarify a vote yes, is a vote to change to having.

Um, because I thought one of the speakers got it.

Contributions will not be required.

Right.

Okay.

And that's what, and that's voting.

If you vote yes, that will be the change that we're doing to the years of service based on service versus contributions.

Right.

So yes, member Dawn should brought up that you counting the contribution.

The question before you is counting years of service.

Okay, the change you you're proposed to make.

If you vote yes, it'll be contributions will not be required during this time.

Okay.

So that's the change from the yes, okay.

Everybody clear on that before we call the vote.

This is for um 7A is for which I'm sorry, 70 is for general employees.

Yes, okay.

So date of employment is a yes, yes, yes.

So you Councilmember Early is a good councilmember Don?

No, Vice Mayor Shaw, no.

Councilmember Webb?

Yes.

Mayor Love?

Yes.

Passes three to two.

Moving on to 7C, ordinance number 2026-07, first reading, an ordinance of the city of Gulfport, Florida, amending chapter 15, pensions, Article 5, municipal police officers trust fund of the code of ordinances of the city of Gulfport, amending section 15-5-1.

Definitions providing for codification, providing for severability of provisions, repealing all ordinances in conflict here with, and providing for an effective date.

Mayor, oh, I was gonna thought Shannon would come.

Mayor, this is the same.

I make a motion to accept the uh ordinance as written, second.

Okay, you have a motion in the second.

Mayor, once again, it's a yes vote would determine that it's time it would date a higher through service.

It would be the same language you just adopt.

Right.

Do you need me up here?

Could you repeat that for me again, please?

Go ahead.

You do if you vote for this, same as the last one.

If you vote yes, contributions are not required during the time that the individuals out on workers' compensation, it's for credited service.

Okay.

Thank you.

Alrighty.

Any discussion or additional questions?

So I would like to say that I obviously have I do have experience with public service and public safety and dealing with people who are on workers' comp and all of the effects that that has on everyone in a family and everyone around you.

And I'm not I am the of all of the people that are sitting up here right now.

I probably have the most experience with it, and I am I have the most sympathy for anyone having to deal with being on workers' comp, having been there and having dealt with family members who do that, and I I understand it, and it like kills me that I have to make this decision as someone might be dealing with it, and I wish that it would have come up in a time where it could be made without the emotion of like knowing that there's a person like a singular person that it might affect more than anyone else.

Um, but also I mean, I I have to go with what how it's written.

So I'm literally only reading it and word for word, understanding it as it's written as far as the new attorney is concerned and how I would read it.

Um so that's my logic behind it is not it has nothing to do with not being sympathetic or not understanding what people go through on a daily basis.

Um, but it literally is just as the words are written, this is what they mean, as far as I can tell.

So thanks.

Anybody else have anything that they would like to say before I open it to public comment?

Seeing none.

Uh public comment, Mr.

Freed.

Uh my apologies, I meant yes, um, I'm not an attorney.

There I don't know.

We only have one attorney up here.

Okay.

I also read law cases.

But you know better.

You just do.

Okay, you're talking to the whole council, not to one person.

We all know better.

Okay, um, and as an aside, and this is very difficult for me to uh say, it's very challenging, gentlemen, union folks.

I'm assuming um, you know, part of the pension plan is advocated by the union, there's a lot of union stuff going on.

Uh what I want to see um is the union uh working in solidarity with nurses' unions and teachers' unions, health care unions, uh possibly stating uh guess what?

We're not gonna cross the Starbucks picket line, for example.

I'd like to see our police and fire unions be more vocal because there's attack on unions in the state of Florida.

Um, the the comments need to be directed towards the uh it's it's it's it's it's related because union is part of it.

It's not related to the ordinance, or is it dealing with a pension?

It's it's it's related to solidarity, okay.

So uh so we need to be more vocal.

Uh union members.

Any other public comment before I ask for e-comments?

Seeing none, e-comments, please.

I do have one comment from a Pinellas Park resident, Tony Smith.

My name is Tony Smith, wife of Gulfport Police Officer Corey Smith.

I am writing regarding agenda item 7C.

Corey reached 10 years of service on May 16th, 2026.

During his career, he suffered an A line of duty injury that kept him out of work while recovering.

Our family did not learn there was an issue regarding pension credit for that period until this year after more than a year of recovery.

From our family's perspective, time spent recovering from an injury sustained while serving the city should not be viewed as a break in service.

Those months occurred because of the service he had already given to this community.

Thank you for considering the impact this matter has on the officers' families who have dedicated years of service to Gulfport.

Okay, thank you.

Anything else before we call the vote?

Seeing none.

Councilmember Early?

Yes.

Councilmember Donch?

No.

Vice Mayor Shaw.

Yes.

Councilmember Webb?

Yes.

Mayor Love?

Yes.

Passes four to one.

Moving on to ordinance number, excuse me, item 7D, ordinance number 2026-08.

First reading and ordinance of the City of Gulfport, Florida, amending chapter 15 pensions, Article 4, Firefighters Retirement Pension Fund of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Gulfport.

Amending section 15-31 definitions, amending section 15-33 Board of Trustees providing for codification, providing for severality of provisions, repealing all ordinance and conflict here with, and providing for an effective date.

Motion to approve.

Second city manager.

This is also this is the firefighters pension plan.

Correct the same language.

So we're going to be consistent across the board.

Yes, ma'am.

What applies to one group applies to everybody?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay.

And again, this is the board of trustees and the pension plan and the attorney who are counseling that this is what they'd like to see.

Yes.

There's a consistency.

Consistency.

Thank you.

And no fiscal impact.

No fiscal impact.

Right.

Okay.

Before I open public comment on this, any additional issues you want to raise here?

Anybody?

I think as we conclude, wrapping up this section, I want to say that I'm I am grateful for the opportunity to address this matter.

I think it's really important that we are consistent across our areas, and that when someone is injured in the line of duty or during their work period, that we do not penalize them for that injury by not allowing them to retire or not counting that towards their retirement.

So I'm really grateful for the opportunity to take this final vote tonight.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you.

Public comment on this?

Any e-comment on this one?

Not on this one.

Alrighty, call the vote.

Councilmember Early?

Yes.

Councilmember Donch?

No.

Vice Mayor Shaw?

Yes.

Councilmember Webb?

Yes.

Mayor Love.

Yes.

Passes four to one.

Moving on to resolutions.

Yes, please.

Item 8A, resolution number 2026-39.

A resolution authorizing the city manager to enter into an agreement with Advanced Engineering and Design Incorporated for design and engine, excuse me, engineering services related to the town shores water main replacement, Gulfport Potable Water Proactive Storm Mitigation Project.

Motion to approve.

I second.

Mayor, this is a state-funded project.

This is for the design and engineering phase of it.

Kendrick, can you give us the background?

Yeah, great.

So this is for the Town Shores potable water system upgrades.

And the other surrounding buildings within that area.

So what we're looking at doing is upgrading the size of the water main out there and upgrading the material.

Design will include doing underground directional drilling so we can minimize the impact on the roadway and uh uh to the residents.

Uh we anticipate if approved tonight, we anticipate hoping going to bid by the end of the year and having construction done by the end of 2027.

So if there's any questions, and uh, to know once we get the closer to the project, we'll do a presentation to the council, and we'll also do a workshop for the town shores residents.

When you when I heard you say that this would affect the I think you said the Lancaster and the Manchester, do you mean the the physical work, or it's only going to help those two buildings?

It's the land, the affected buildings will be Lancaster, Manchester, Nottingham, Diplomat Embassy, Buckingham, and Windsor.

So they're all going to get better water pressure and water quality.

Yep, exactly.

Okay.

All right.

All right.

Uh in speaking order, please, starting with council member early.

Any questions?

I just had a quick question.

So the 59,000 is what we're talking about now.

Does that come out of our 200,000 that we're going to match?

Yes.

Thank you.

Okay.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

I don't have any questions.

Thank you.

No further questions.

Um, is this because we've been talking a lot about infrastructure?

Is this part of our stormwater project?

This was done prior to.

This was done prior to this has been an ongoing issue even before I started that Mr.

O'Reilly has been uh working on getting uh this project completed.

So this is in addition to the other projects that we're doing, perfectly.

Correct, yes.

Okay, thank you.

Great.

We took it easy out here.

Oh, it's been a lot.

Do we I don't have any questions?

I've been hearing about this for a while.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

Any public comment on this?

Any comments on this?

No e-comments.

Alrighty.

Call the vote.

Do we get to oh, you want to have discussion?

Go ahead.

Well, yeah, I want to absolutely.

Sorry, when I questions, you know, sometimes question discussion once, twice.

Go ahead.

Um so I just want to uh thank uh Senator Hooper for this appropriation.

It's my understanding that he's the one who put it in.

Um, and he this is his last year in the serving us in the Florida legislature, and this will make a very big difference to our residents in town shores, and so thank you, Senator.

I doubt you're listening, you're probably golfing somewhere, but this is a a big part of improving the quality of life there and town shores.

Thank you, Mayor.

Anybody else?

I know we're not in order, but I didn't mean to cut anyone else.

Oh, okay.

I would say we can call the vote now.

Councilmember Early?

Yes.

Council Member Donch?

Yes, Vice Mayor Shaw, yes.

Councilmember Webb, yes, Mayor Love?

Yes, passes unanimously, very good.

We do not have a discussion item tonight, so we will move to new business and we'll do that in speaking order as well.

So we'll start with council member early.

Okay.

Um I have no new business tonight.

Thank you.

Councilmember Donch.

I don't have new business, but everybody else talked about uh hurricane preparedness today, and I just wanted to mention I am here from five to six every Wednesday with office hours, and I've helped a few residents with the MySafe Florida home program, so I'm really familiar with it.

So if anybody's trying to work through that to get your house readier for hurricane season, I'm happy to help with anything that I possibly can to get more money.

It's free money, they match you up to ten thousand dollars.

So if you're interested in something like that and you just need some guidance, I'm here from five to six every Wednesday.

I'm happy to help.

Thank you.

Councilmember Shaw, uh the only thing I wanted to bring up was to make sure that my fellow council members are aware that the Florida League of Cities annual conference registration is now open.

Does it include email two?

Um, October.

It does not include emote.

What uh what it could include if you so chose was the the required mandated ethics class.

Okay, thank you.

As part of those sessions.

We got it, we got an email today.

Okay, I was gonna say, unless it came when I was out here.

We all got an email late today.

Oh perfect.

Well, I will send that out to my.

I had attended one of their meetings this week, and um they said that it was open yesterday, so then today the email came.

So, just want to make sure everybody saw that.

Okay, any at all?

Thank you.

Alrighty, Councilmember Webb, no new business from me.

Okay, well, okay.

Well I have some new business, so um, we're gonna circle back.

I had uh under new business said according to our policies and procedures, we said that if we were gonna have a workshop, we were gonna do our darndest to try and keep it on the first Thursday of the month.

So at this time we do not have a workshop, and we're not required, but we don't have one scheduled for July 2nd or August 6th.

So I wanted to throw that out there to see if there was anybody that was asking for a workshop, and if which date if either of those dates would work for you.

So this is just I'm throwing this out there before I move on to the rest of my new business.

So I don't think that we should have one on July 2nd.

I think that's too immersed with the holiday, but I do think that we have a boat workshop that we'd like to do, and that would be fine for me to attend that in August.

Okay, so my question for you on that is if we did one on August 6th, okay.

Since we talked um about doing one for them, and I've been down to Veterans Park several times, and I've made pleas for people to reach out to me.

Um, other than the two voters who were at our meeting, and we addressed both of the issues that were raised at that meeting.

I've not heard from a voter, so I'm wondering if anybody else is still feeling that we need to run a workshop for the boaters if we're not hearing from the voters.

I didn't realize we were hearing from them.

Well, I don't, I am only speaking for myself.

I haven't heard from I do often um have things brought up to me from voters and other people who are interested in what voters are thinking.

I feel like August might be a good workshop to have like uh four boat life people, um, and the the people in the community to maybe have like a hurricane safety, like I realize that it starts in June, but really that's when it starts to get kind of bad, and maybe um you know, like our marine patrol or somebody could be here to help like guide people through what you should do to get ready for hurricane when you're leaving on a boat, and just general safety things that you know could we could organize, and if we're we're organizing it and having it here, maybe it would be you know helpful then to have those resources available rather than trying to like get a whole bunch of people together on their own, but if we have it pre-scheduled, um it might be helpful to people.

So if that's a subject that we would want to use, we could do that on August 6th.

Okay, council member Shaw, your thoughts.

Well, I do like the idea of even bringing in the the uh boat life hurricane safety factor.

Um, but but city manager, did I understand you to say that we need to start on budget workshops?

That's correct.

I'd I'd like to, I mean, the idea was that that first meeting in August, either one of them I would bring you the budget.

You receive it physically by charter on July 15th, as soon as immediate following you there wouldn't be anything that would pertain us from we wanted to have both items on the workshop mayor, is just to give you go over the the budget where we're at.

We're gonna I'm gonna talk more hit on it more on Thursday when I talk about where we're going after we have the discussion of the impacts possibly of the um constitutional amendment, but I would like to have early in August a budget or late in July a uh budget discussion, whichever you prefer.

Your thoughts on uh council member Webb.

I I would prefer singleness of subject on workshops, especially the budget, it's so very important.

Sure, um and I think you know the expectation.

I was just listening to all of the legislative debate on um the property tax stuff, and their expectation is that we understand our city budgets as city council members line by line, and we can defend every single thing that we spend um money on, and so I think that sounds like a time, a time-intensive practice and one that will not only benefit us but benefit the community.

And so I um scheduled, I actually schedule I that first week in July.

I was out of town, um, I got a flight back for July 2nd, and I'm flying out again the morning of July 3rd just for because I thought that we were gonna have it.

So I'm available if we want to do a hurricane thing there.

I think that's a great idea.

I also love since we don't know if the vote life people will show up, just being cognizant of the fact that they have issues that are important to them that are that are similar to general stuff but slightly different in how they prepare for things that we just include them in everything moving forward, and we just do that intellectual exercise beforehand to make sure that we're imagining how things would impact them.

Um and so I I love the hurricane prepare preparation as a first like exercise of that, and so I can be here July 2nd if we want to have a hurricane meeting on July 2nd.

I I'm I'm happy to do that.

Any thoughts on that before I share my thoughts?

I think a lot of City Hall people won't be around July 2nd if we're closed on July 3rd for the 4th of July, right?

Are we closed?

We're closed on the third, but most of my people have to work Saturday, so yeah.

Yeah, so yeah, I don't I I can come to anything.

I'm available for both.

Okay.

So my first priority is certainly going to be the budget, and so I don't think that we would be ready for the budget workshop on July 2nd.

So for me that's a pretty easy decision that August 6th needs to be the um a budget workshop and that we need to put that on our calendar.

I hope everybody agrees on that.

So that's an easy one.

In terms of July 2nd, I'm in town, it doesn't bother me to attend a workshop, but it would have bothered me to attend a workshop if we had all of our council members and staff here, and one person showed up, and it's a person who has not come to a meeting and isn't willing to come to meetings in the past.

Um, I really felt like with us having talked about having a workshop for them, and the two people that were at the meeting, what that's a good month or more ago.

I mean, I know that the things that they asked for, I responded to the very next day, and the issue that they asked to be fixed was fixed within 48 hours, okay.

And I know I've not heard one word from one voter since, including thank you to the city.

Okay, so um that that's a small part of it, but I'm saying, do we need to call a workshop to help them if they're not asking us to workshop it?

That's that's what I where I'm at.

Not to say that we wouldn't ever have a workshop, but I think we have to hear the call from them that hey, could you do this for us?

Okay.

Well, let's I'm sorry, I don't want to interrupt.

Um, but maybe let's not have July 2nd, and if I do feel like I get enough interest, maybe at um, when is our next meeting?

Is it before that?

July 2nd isn't.

Oh.

Um, well, then maybe sometime between July 7th and uh when we come back, I'll ask to be able to have a um uh town hall or something where people can come and just participate in something that you know might be helpful, and I uh I like what you're saying because I do think that some of this could happen in a town hall.

The difference though is that when you're in the chambers and it's a workshop, it's very structured.

Sure.

Because I went to town halls that happened outside after that the voters arranged, and there was never less than 2,500 people speaking at once.

So it was a total disaster.

Yeah, so being in this type of format would be more productive, but you know, we can't people we have to meet them where they're at.

I understand.

Sure.

So I think let's um cancel July 2nd for now.

We don't have something that is so pressing that we need to have it that day, and it's the day before holiday, and then if I do get enough interest that people would like to come together as a community and still have staff available to them, then we could maybe schedule something in between.

That's a little bit less formal, and I can take it.

That's great.

I think you have consensus on that.

All right.

So then I'm budget budget workshop on August 6th.

Yes, please.

Okay.

Thank you.

So continuing on my new business then.

So that was one thing.

Then my next has to do with, you know, we have a call for artists out there right now, okay?

And the deadline for that is June 30th.

So I don't even know if we have submissions at this point, but if we have submissions, I just wanted to touch touch base a little bit with each of you about.

Okay.

I would like to think that when the submissions come in and we're past the deadline, I would like to think that each one of us has an opportunity to see all of the submissions, preferably without knowing who the artists are, okay, and then each one of us could tape take and rank our top five in order of what they are to us.

And by doing that, then we would be able to whittle it down, to then we would know where are we in consensus on the top five.

You know, are four of us in agreement with what number one is, okay?

But we would get it down to then, you know, the top couple, and then we would do a live vote up here at the following council meeting.

That's kind of my thought.

That's being transparent.

We wouldn't know who the artist is, but we could each independently rank by ourselves.

Then the city clerk, I think, would be willing to compile that for us and say, okay, your top vote getters.

These three were soared way above anybody else, and then those three could be using my example, could be brought forward, and then we would have a vote on it at that time.

Okay, and of course, we could reject them all too.

I mean, that that that's a possibility.

You know, we haven't seen anything, so it's easier to talk about rejection at this point than it is after we've seen things, but that's kind of where we're at, and then just to clarify the miscommunication that I see over and over, we are not changing the sign for Trolley Market Square, okay?

That is a double-sided sign.

The sign that looks towards Trolley Market Square is not being touched, those have glass panels that slide in and out, they're massive.

Okay, we are talking about changing this sign that it currently is in black and white that says welcome to golfport.

We would like that sign to be more representative of golf port overall than a black and white basic sign.

So that's what we're trying to accomplish.

And of course, there'll have to be a vote on this after we see the submissions.

We'll see where we are at that point.

So anybody want to fine-tune what I just said, or are we good with that for now?

That's good.

Okay, good.

Uh, then I wanted to say um, oh, for all of you listening out there, I hope you're noticing that there's a difference in the audio tonight.

We have a new system, our own employees did the work, so you should be hearing us clear and more precise than you have in the past.

And if you're not, send me those emails tonight, okay.

I want to know about it because I'm cautiously optimistic.

And with that, then I'm going to just to be clear we're gonna join adjourn this meeting, and we're gonna take about a three minute break for anyone who wants to leave can leave, then we're gonna go into a brief CRA meeting.

So, with that, this council meeting is adjourned.