City Council Meeting

>> Good evening. I call this May 5th meeting to order. If there's any chance whatsoever that your phone call with the ringer is on, take a second now to make sure it is not. I would appreciate that. Also would like to say that I understand that sometimes there are side conversations and you feel like you need to check something with your neighbor. That's okay but take it to the lobby. It is weird the way the sound works here but when anybody is talking out there, I can hear them as clear as day. I'm going to ask you, as I do at every meeting, please don't do that. With that in mind, we will start out with our invocation by Councilmember Webb followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. Please stand. Councilmember Jennifer Webb: >> Please join me in a moment of silence. Lord, make me a channel of thy peace, that where there is hatred I may bring love, where there is wrong I may bring the spirit of forgiveness and where there's discord I may bring harmony, where there's error I may bring truth, where there's doubt I bring faith and where there's despair I may bring hope and where there are shadows I may bring light and that where there is sadness I may bring joy. Lord, grant that I may seek to comfort than to be comforted, to understand than to be understood, to love and be loved. For it is self-forgetting that one finds it is by forgiving that one is forgiven and it is by dying that one is awakened to eternal life. Amen. All: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, that to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. >> Thank you so much and with that can we have a roll call please? Council member Webb? Present. Council member Earley? Present. Dortch? Here. Mayor of? Here. Saltzman? Here. O'reilly? City clerk is present. >> So tonight we are heavy in the beginning here with presentations. We have three tonight and we will start with a proclamation for Safe Boating Week and it will be read by our city clerk. >> For nearly 90 million Americans, boating continues to be a popular recreational activity. Gulfport with its beautiful access to Boca Ciega Bay has an active population enjoying boating, sailing, paddling and fishing. During National Safe Boating Week the U.S. Coast Guard and its federal, state and local safe boating partners encourage all boaters to explore and enjoy America's beautiful waters responsibly. Safe boating begins with preparation. The Coast Guard estimates that human error accounts for 70% of all boating accidents and that life jackets could prevent more than 80% of boating fatalities. Through basic boating safety procedures, carrying life saving emergency distress and communications equipment, wearing life jackets, attending safe boating courses, participating in free boat safety checks and staying sober when navigating, we can help ensure boaters on our coastal, inland and offshore waters stay safe. National Safe Boating Week is observed to bring attention to important life saving tips for recreational boaters so they can have a safer, more fun experience out on the water throughout the year. Whereas 560 people died in 2024 in boating related accidents in the United States, approximately 80% of these are fatalities caused by drowning. And whereas this is a decrease of 14% from previous years due to the efforts of organizations like the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary, and whereas the vast majority of these accidents are caused by human error or poor judgment and not by the boat, equipment or environmental factors. And whereas a significant number of boaters who lose their lives by drowning each year would be alive today had they won their life jackets. Therefore be it resolved that I, care and love, mayor of the city of Gulfport, do hereby support the goals of the Safe Boating Campaign and proclaim May 16th through 22nd, 2026 as National Safe Boating Week in the start of the year round effort to support safe boating. In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the city of Gulfport, Florida to be affixed this fifth day of May 2026. >> (inaudible) Here is our official -- good. Thank you. >> Thank you. Council members mayor, city of Gulfport -- are we tired of hurricane season already? 2024 as you all know, our flotilla building was wiped out. Thanks to all of you, and your predecessors, we have a home for Gulfport. Through the use of the neighborhood center on 49th Street for our meetings, our safe boating classes and a new class we just started on Saturday, you are in command for when your spouse or friend needs to take charge of your boat and you are disabled. In April 11th, due to you giving us a quorum thanks to our harbormaster Dennis, our VHF radio station which is a force multiplier for the United States Coast Guard and all search and rescue operations, training , it turned training into action. It was just a regular morning where the radio guard -- we guard these vessels when they are out there and we are their lifeline. They check in with us every 30 minutes and they're going through the same training that the United States Coast Guard goes through. We have two radios, one monitoring them on a government channel and the other monitoring channel 16 and the national Hailing frequency and 11:47 a.m. We hear Mayday, mayday, may day. A civilian vessel is calling the Coast Guard. A man has fallen off a vessel out by the bridge in the Skyway Bridge area. Coast guard is responding. We have a chart. A latitude and longitude -- we chart the location. We have two vessels at Boca Ciega Bay training right now. I call the officer of the day to get permission to put my vessels that are in that area under the Coast Guard's orders and send them to that location. They could be there in 12 minutes. The Coast Guard would take 37. Our two vessels went to that location and then they are operating as a United States Coast Guard. They're being coordinated by law enforcement, by the Coast Guard and it is all hands on deck to find this individual that had fallen off this boat. FWC -- college patrol, local law enforcement -- our vessels blocking the channel so other vessels do not come through while divers are in the area trying to locate this person. You mentioned Safe Boating week. We come to find out this was an Asian gentleman, an adult, who had his life jacket on when he got on the boat but then had taken it off. What makes matters even worse is this gentleman was handicapped. No one was keeping an eye on this individual. The coordinates that we received were an estimate, and latitude and longitude is degrees, minutes, seconds -- those seconds can turn into miles and they did. This happened on April 11th and the individual was not located Miles away, on April 13th. The importance of safe boating, of being aware of the people that you have under your responsibility when you're on your vessel -- my last real job was a charter cabin. I took people out and showed them how to Spearfish. My six passengers were right in front of me. My mate was standing next to me and I had a rear observer on the other side and I knew where everybody was at any given time. This is why we promote safe boating. For both the captains and the crew. This went beyond trading. That's what they were doing in Boca Ciega Bay. Now it is actual. Their training turned into reality and this is something they will remember the rest of their lives. Without your support, and your support, and your support, we would not be able to do what we do. Thank you. >> Thank you for all that you do. [applause] >> Our next presentation is going to be from an extremely good group of people. You may have either seen it on social media or you met them in person. We have a group known as the Gulf Scholars led by Doctor Amanda Haygood who is doing a survey of our residents and what they think about our beach for some time now and they are here to share the results with us. >> Thank you so much. I want to say thanks to everybody here for making space for this in your agenda. We are so excited to share our findings with you. We will take a moment to introduce ourselves. As mayor love said, I am Amanda Haygood and I direct the Gulf Scholars Program at Eckerd College. >> My name is John Carreiro and I'm a senior and my majors are environmental and animal studies. >> My name is Summer and I'm a freshman in my major is Environmental Studies and Public Health. >> My name is Jenny and I'm thrilled to be here as a senior in Environmental Studies. >> We have an agenda that we'll share with you. Mostly what we want to do is tell you about what our project was common the premise and examine the three issues we are looking at. Number one, how do people who use Gulfport Beach value the beach? What do they love? Number two, what are their chief concerns about the beach and number three, what are the different resiliency solutions available to us are they most interested in? Finally, sharing some next steps or thoughts about directions we can go from here. So to summarize our project briefly, we were so grateful to be able to receive the funding from the Tampa Bay Estuary Program's mini grants that allowed us to partner with the city to do what we are calling a public engagement campaign around coastal resiliency. This had two parts. Number one, a series of educational presentations that we gave at different venues. Number two, a survey that asked about the different kind of areas that I just outlined for you. One of the things we learned in the survey is that not all of our respondents were comfortable with the term coastal resiliency. I want to offer this for the benefit of all in the room. This is the definition that comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Where coastal resiliency is understood as ways that communities can build up their shorelines so that they can bounce back more quickly and more efficiently after hazardous events like hurricanes, coastal storms and flooding. So it is realizing that those types of dangers are inevitable when you live in a coastal environment and shaping your shoreline so it can be more resilient. I said we were doing a public engagement campaign and this slide kind of outlines what we were doing. You can see many of the places where we gave presentations on the right and you can see some of the places where we tabled and surveyed our markets and our giveaways and things like that. We were working from January to April so four months, gave eight public presentations and collected in all 268 surveys. To tell you a little bit about who our respondents were, this graph shows how that breaks down across full time and part time residents and visitors and the people who classify themselves as others. This may be people who lived in Saint Pete for instance. You can see that the vast majority of our respondents were either full time or part time residents and we feel this is important because we are trying to get information from folks who have a vested interest in our city and who know it well and who spend a lot of time in our invested in it. Another important thing to outline is that about one fifth of our respondents did have a home, business or both damaged in the storms of 2024. I'm going to pass things over to summer and she'll talk about the first part of the survey -- the way people value Gulfport Beach. >> So like Amanda said, I'll be talking about the value of Gulfport Beach and what makes it so special to our residents. We want to get people's input on how frequently they visited the beach, what beach activities people were doing and what made the beach so special to them. First was beach frequency, how many times people were visiting the beach and we heard from people that they were using the beach, which was big. We were like okay, people are using Gulfport Beach and using it for the right reasons and they're going there for relaxation, friends come a family and we saw that out of 50% of people that we surveyed were going weekly if not more to Gulfport Beach. So like I just said, some beach activities that we saw were most frequent that people were doing. They were relaxation, going there to appreciate nature and they were socializing with friends and family. One comment from a community member that we pulled out from our survey explained how Gulfport Beach felt like a community gathering hub, really showing its value. So what makes Gulfport Beach so special? A couple factors are that it's the only public beach on Boca Ciega Bay. It being a bay, it provides us with many ecosystem services. And if you're not familiar with that term, it is the direct benefits that humans receive from healthy ecosystems. This is represented at Gulfport Beach, healthy seagrass which helps sustain aquatic life. And you can see here one comment from a community member that we thought -- it embodied why the beach is special is Gulfport Beach feels like a destination for local community and is not just a tourist trap. I'll be handling it to John to talk about the concerns about Gulfport Beach. >> Thank you. Some of the concerns about Gulfport Beach, 85% of respondents are either concerned or very concerned about the future of Gulfport for hurricane season. On the survey we had six different topics -- water quality, erosion, presence of wildlife, litter condition of facilities and safety. Out of our six topics, the top three that stood the most with the most agreement were water quality, erosion and presence of wildlife. To start out with our most agreed topic, water quality being the biggest issue at Gulfport, 82% agreed that it was a concern or very concerning. Yes. So some of the comments that we pulled out from our survey mentioned over in Gulfport and that leads to sewage spills and overall can make Gulfport not the most desirable beach in Pinellas County. Our second most concern that we got from our survey was erosion and for example, people are concerned about the vast erosion from hurricanes that comes out of the public tax dollars spent to fix it. And lastly, wildlife was our third most concern that we got from our survey with 72% of people either concerned or very concerned about this topic. People emphasize that they often go to the beach to see wildlife and how it can overall show environmental health. This can lead to discussion for a healthier beach equaling a healthier environment for wildlife and people. >> I'm going to pop back in and talk about the third part of our survey which was thinking about different resiliency solutions. When we surveyed people we kind of offered four possibilities common ways we could keep maintaining our beach, keep it resilient. They are for the benefit of everyone in the room, managed retreat, seawall reinforcement, beach Renourishment and nature based solution and for the benefit of all, I'll outline what each of those are and I'll talk about how people responded. Managed retreat is a drastic option. That's the option that says water is coming up, storms are coming in and we need to move as much of our infrastructure and our valuable properties away from the shoreline, move it back and let the shoreline renature and essentially get everything we value out of the way. We are all pretty familiar with seawalls. It's a strategy we've been using for a long time to keep the land where we want it to be and the seawall is just a large bulkhead that's built between the land and the water to keep the land in place. Beach Renourishment -- I think many of us have seen two that's when we dredge sand from one place to fortify it and put it on a beach so that it's got more sediment, longer beach and the nature based solutions is kind of a big catch all term. Sometimes known as a living shoreline. This is where we are using natural elements to try to do some of that work of preventing erosion and improving water quality and that can happen in a couple ways. Sometimes people use plants which you might plant either on the sand or emergent plants that go in the water and these help to keep sediments in place and they also cleanse the water that runs into the beach and provide a water quality benefit as well and another strategy that's used under nature based solutions would be installing oyster reefs or oyster domes that oysters can grow on and the idea there that's a little further out in the water and the idea there is number one, oysters provide a water quality benefit. I'm fond of quoting that one adult oyster can filter 50 gallons of water a day just because it eats. Pretty amazing. Another important thing that structures like that can do is break up wave energy as it's coming in through things like storm surge so it's not as rough on our beach. Having outlined to those, you can see the various levels of approval. Those numbers represent numbers of people who approved or strongly approved of that particular solution and I want to break down each of those and tell you more about what people had to say. I also want to emphasize that it looks like with seawall reinforcement and Beach renourishment, it's about half as popular as nature based solutions -- I want to add an important qualification which is for those two in particular, it's not as though everybody was saying or half people were saying I really don't like those things. I was more some ambivalence expressed. Lots of people picked number three which is our neutral response. I'll get into that more as I'm outlining these. About 44% of people approved or strongly approved of managed retreat and I think the consensus among most of our comments there was that yep, with sea levels rising and storms intensifying, this is absolutely something we're going to think about but none of us wants to think about it right now. I think that quote that we have really captures that because it's not as simple as moving things. There's all kinds of equity issues with what you move first, the expense of moving, who has to move. Nobody's quite ready to deal with that and I frankly don't blame them. With just a little bit more approved or strongly approved, we have seawall reinforcement and the two quotes I chose there really express a variety of opinions. On the one hand people recognize that this is a strategy we've been using for a very long time. We're very invested in seawalls, that quote in particular -- seawalls protect some of our really important places, our waterfront restaurants and recreation centers and all those things we want to protect. On the other hand some comments talked about seawalls and the cost of seawalls because there is a trade off when we use seawalls. For one thing, they do interrupt natural movements of sand and they definitely limit the way the habitat can build so they can be accosted biodiversity at times and another person talked about how they are expensive. You build them but then there's a constant maintenance process that can become pricey over time. I think that explains a little bit of the rating that seawalls got. For beach renourishment, this is a solution that a lot of us are familiar with in the Tampa area. We see it happen quite a lot. Once again, there was a sense that this is something we had done for a long time and we have some trust in this process. I thought this comment was interesting and sort of talked about the worry that a lot of people have that beach renourishment is a temporary solution that eventually whatever is pulling the sand from beaches is going to do it again and you'll have to renourish -- so this person suggested if we renourish, why don't we add plans -- that might keep the sand in place and lengthen the life of that solution. Finally, nature based solutions are living shoreline had 85% of people either approving or strongly approving of it for a variety of different reasons. Maybe reflecting what I've said before about other solutions. There's a sense that we need to try something new because we are starting to understand the limitations of some of our traditional ways of preventing erosion on the beach. Some people saw strong ecological value that living shorelines would add habitat and that might speak to people who come to the beach to see wildlife and that they are cost effective. You have to pay up front but ideally if you do it right the living shoreline grows and keeps on growing and establishes itself well. But I do want to pull out kind of another sentiment that I think is really important especially in the context of Gulfport Beach. There are many people who while approving in general are the idea of a living shoreline, also wondered how we could balance that with all the uses that some are double dashed through recreational uses. This might make sense if you come to the beach for wildlife or if you are coming to access the water or play sports come we need to come up with a solution that allows people to still be able to do that. So I'll hand things over to Jenny who's going to talk about some conclusions we've come to based on this information. >> Thank you doctor Hagood. From all the conversations we've had in the work we've done, we've realized that residents, snowbirds, tourists and visitors all have an interest in the maintenance and protection of Gulfport Beach and it's obvious that there's an immense amount of interest and support for living shorelines. If you look at the page in front of you you'll see a map of some of the shorelines that have been constructed around the area and this isn't an exhaustive list nor does it include constructions that are started and approved all the time. This is a real burgeoning field and cultural resilience measures here in the region. Today I'll be going into a deep dive of two current living shoreline projects close to home so we can get a better idea of how this might work in Gulfport Beach. We have treasure Bay and this is a condo and recreational facility on Treasure Island and the City of Treasure Island realized that the repairs for the seawalls alone that had not sufficiently protected them from floods would require $1.8 million in funds. This made them realize they needed to try something new and what they did was they created a mixture of full seawall removal and partial living seawall and a mixture of living and -- around 4000ft of their shoreline. I want to point out that this also includes the new addition of gazebos, boardwalks, walkable infrastructure and -- this is a good way to point out that the addition of living shoreline and resilience measures doesn't mean that we are essentially removing the cultural and social value from the area. It can add to it and make it more inclusive. Additionally through the added vegetation, there are ecological improvements and those ecosystem services we talked about before in water quality improvements. Next is lasting Park. This is a large park in Saint Petersburg and it's most well known for its beachfront access. And just like Gulfport, most common activities before the living shoreline was constructed was water recreation, relaxation, nature appreciation and before its installation it was in trouble. According to U.S. Engineering survey, there were severe water quality concerns and especially with its piping infrastructure and 200 zero square feet of its total coastal area had eroded since 1994. Now, there was a good reason why people were concerned about water quality because before the installation, according to the Tampa Bay Atlas, there were levels of bacteria that's a common indicator of water quality that were up to ten times above the healthy limit on any given day before the installation. Onto the installation, this was a -- system. Sometimes known as -- are these big giant constructions -- if you've ever seen them from Tampa Bay watch -- that encourage the adherence of Oyster breakup that wave energy like we were talking about because they also provide habitat for fish and other wildlife. Since then it's become a real family friendly space. There are always events on the beach. I think most recently the biggest one was the old Southeast Easter Egg Hunt and it's still a very commonly used space here. With the water quality improvements, these are public health benefits. Since its installation the water quality has steadily been in the good and healthy range with the biggest divergence from that being the 2024 hurricane season but then we quickly saw that the ecosystem was as healthy as it should be and that bacterial load went down and this is an example of a living shoreline doing exactly what they are meant to do for our communities and that brings us to hurricanes. It is generally known that living shorelines can help mitigate flood and hurricane damage and if you look on the picture, you can see that the living shoreline and the non-living shoreline, the unconstructed part -- the living shoreline takes up about one quarter of the total coastline in about 700 of the 2800 available and what we've seen using this picture and from the data taken as of 2020 for hurricane season, the section of lasting park that had the living shoreline had an extremely significant amount of less erosion than the unprotected. . The unprotected area of the coastline had a significant amount of damage when compared to the living shoreline area and this brings me to a quote from Tom and has sent a lot of work in living shorelines here. It's a testament to the value of the nature based shoreline stabilization solutions that can withstand the worst hurricanes this region has seen in decades. On to education -- if you see those stats, we are seeing that almost one third of our respondents felt familiar with coastal resilience, only less than a third and 11% needed to know more information about the topic before making decisions. These are topics that are extremely important to everyday life, the economy and tourism in Gulfport and just living your life. This says that there's a real hunger and desire to know more in Gulfport and from that we suggest that we can be -- hopefully in the fall 2026 with the support of the Gulf Scholar Program -- and we would like this to be an opportunity to discuss community members questions, solicit their ideas and concerns about the future and envision a possible living shoreline in the area of. This would likely be affiliated with Tampa Bay -- trained facilitators and this is an opportunity for us to invite even more people to the table than we did in our surveys and make a more comprehensive view of what coastal resilience measures can be like in Gulfport. Beyond a workshop is imperative that Gulfport continues to take its place among larger coastal resiliency measures in the region. A way to do that is with Tampa Bay watch, and this is already a trusted partner in the area and they've worked on the shoreline projects with our expertise and they were endorsed by full time residents and they regularly came up in a conversations. People want to work with them. Furthermore, as we were talking before about how often you will see kids playing out there and how important our beach is to the lives of the children of Gulfport, they also have the bay grasses and classes programs which allows students to get involved in cultural resilience and their ecosystems around them. Now I'd like to wrap up this session with a quote. A living shoreline could be challenging approach considering the highly developed area. Making it a more natural and beautiful space to enjoy can only have benefits. (inaudible) finally I'd like to add with a consensus item. I ask the council to come to a consensus that the city would support a workshop to solicit and discuss community members questions about living shorelines at Gulfport Beach facilitated by the Tampa Bay Council trained facilitators. >> Thank you very much. I think what we will do here, if you are done, is before you sit down, to C -- and we'll go in speaking order -- if anybody has specific questions for the presentation of the Gulf or from the Gulf scholars and our speaking order would put council member Webb first. Any questions? >> Are we just doing questions first, mayor? >> I'm curious about your sample. Was it a convenient sample? >> I have methodology questions. >> Convenient in the sense of we were at the beach so people at the beach use the beach. We did canvasing at the beach but at the same time we did survey collection at the various different events that we hosted and I would imagine that you'd have to have some sort of interest in coastal resilience to go to those. Also we took surveys at the tree giveaway. I think that's where we saw you. >> I can't remember come up because for the -- for the suggested approaches and uses and values and concerns, was it a ring system or -- did we rank the responses? I know you can pick more than one but -- >> We had some ranking questions but for each of those it was -- >> And the -- hold on. Are you familiar with Florida Bar's property insurance section? They did a full evaluation of the amount of property taxes we get from our coastal area. Dick Batchelor was the one who did that who set up the environmental college at Stetson University for environmental attorneys involved in environmental stuff. I was wondering if you had come across any of that work? >> Could you tell me the name again? >> Dick Batchelor and I can email you that. >> That was the only questions I had in terms of methodology and it seems very thorough. Thank you. >> My only question -- I had a similar question to council member Webb. (inaudible) you actually answered. Water quality, are we surprised at the water quality being so high? I'm not surprised because people mention it but I launched myself there all the time and I don't really see a problem with it but I'm obviously missing it. You weren't surprised. >> Was I surprised that it was ranked as such a concern? >> It does seem very high because we do see people -- on the other hand like some of the other responses that we got the free form responses talked about I would swim there but the water -- some of it may have to do with it being a bay beach and that being different than a Gulf beach for sure. But I think people are nervous about sewage, boats came up a lot in that response and worries about sewage being disposed of correctly there. >> I was just curious. Thank you and you did great. Excellent. >> Council member dash? >> My only question in the last park picture, was it a hybrid shoreline and did they have all that extra stuff there or was it just plants? >> The area that was a living shoreline was a true living shoreline with a full seawall going forward. >> Thank you. >> They're asking great questions already. Did you get many responses from the digital questionnaires that you did? >> That's interesting because when I was putting this survey together I was advised, you've got to get out there and collect paper. You've got to get out and collect paper. I think people found our survey a little long. We were trying to be thorough. We've actually got lots of responses from digital. In an effort to make the paper survey a little shorter and easier to take, we took out all of the free responses and I'm really glad we kept the digital because I think people were taking their time and really composing their answers carefully. I can't remember the exact proportion but I say it's probably close to one third paper, two thirds digital. It was the opposite of what we expected. Thank you community for responding. >>? So I was really -- I will say disappointed -- to hear that 82% of the people expressed concern about water quality. I know that we test our water many times a week. Not many but several times a week. And that is posted. And it is routinely very good and we've had many people come here and reference that. I'm not so sure that that is an accurate -- it's definitely accurate that 82% think it's a problem but I don't know that it necessarily is a problem. I know for myself, if you get used to these beautiful sandy beaches along our coastline and then you come and walk into the Gulfport Beach, and whether it's the seagrasses or the mud squishes between your toes, you might not like it and you go oh, the water is no good here. But that's not really the case. I'm glad you pointed that out because I'm very surprised and what that tells me is we need to do a better job of educating. I don't think reality is the same. The second thing is when you mentioned the oysters, oyster beds and oyster balls -- are they different? >> Okay. >> When we are referring to oyster balls, those are specific -- two feet tall. Most commonly you see those being made by Tampa Bay watch in the area and these are devices put in the water to facilitate a living shoreline and the building of an oyster reef but oysters will set up pretty much anywhere. That's why those orbs work so well. Oyster reefs are a natural part of our ecosystems here. >> Do oyster balls -- how deep does the water have to be? How far out do you typically go off the shore? >> I don't want to mislead you so I won't give you an exact number. In general they are used a lot in our more shallow beaches as well. >> And the third thing is I'm curious because I know that we have applied for our permit for Submergible -- easy for me to say -- permit for our living shoreline. Gulfport was moving forward on a living shoreline and then we got hit by three hurricanes and a pop up flood and it went to the back burner and we did apply for that I believe. Probably last June and we were just waiting on that. Do you know if any of your respondents were aware that we are moving forward -- moving forward on two at this point? >> I can jump in and I can say I don't think so actually. I think that might be another area where the city can do some more education and more publicity. And given our conversations we're mostly in reference to the beach, so that could be why it didn't come up as much but I definitely think that's not something that's widely known and it would be great if it were. >> Thank you so much for coming and sharing your information and taking the initiative to do this because whether we are surprised by the findings or not, we needed to hear the findings. Thank you so much. [applause] >> That brings us to our third presentation for tonight and that will be done by -- that will be done -- I'll turn that over to the city manager and it's called the state of the city and my opinion, all the years that I set up and listen to the meetings, I always found it to be my favorite meeting because it gives the city employees and department heads a real opportunity to share what has been accomplished in the previous year. That being said, I would like to turn that over to our City manager. >> This evening, we use this as an informational and also celebratory. I am blessed to have this type of staff that provides such a level of personal service to residents. And what we'd like to talk about is the everyday minutia of. I hate to say it. Dennis is working on the living shoreline adjacent but it also but -- those are our core operational aspects. The senior center and recreational center. We'll start with behind the scenes in the curtain and I'd like to invite Chris Kalama our finance director and start with some things that happen in the back. >> I'm just going to give you an update, overview of the finance department and the first slide gives you a high level overview of our department's key responsibilities. Oversight begins with the annual operating budget, preparation and compliance. As you all know we are starting the process now for next fiscal year. That will be coming to you all in July to start that discussion. Financial reporting -- our annual audited financial statements -- actually we are wrapping up our fiscal year September 25th right now and we'll be coming to you in June to present our audit from last fiscal year. Additionally, a large part of the budget process -- you'll hear us talk about TRIM, Truth in Milage, and that's how we report and receive the property tax revenues. It is a pretty complicated strict process dictated by state statute and that process will be started in July when taxable values are certified by the property appraisal and will be coming to you for the village rates and the budget process. That will be working through over the next few months so you'll be hearing a lot more about that as well. So the next two items are kind of the day to day stuff. Jim mentioned we've got to receive our money and pay our bills. We have a number of funding sources that come through and they require additional reporting tracking and cash -- purchasing payments have to get distributed and there's a number of strong internal controls the finance department has to adhere to to ensure fiscal stewardship over the disbursement process. Next slide is covering a few key metrics and accomplishments for the finance team. The fiscal year 26 budget for the year we are operating in right now in the general budget is 21.8 million and not included on the slide but additionally we have the enterprise funds that covers the sanitation, water sewer and the Marina funds and for those that's a combined budget of 17.6 million and by far the largest component of that is 11 million in water and sewer and about 3 million each for Marina and sanitation. Another accomplishment achievement, we have to work on a FEMA line of credit loan and so we got that secured in that secures 5 million line of credit. Should we need that, if it disaster occurs, let's hope we don't need it but we do have a $5 million line of credit and we haven't had to use it yet. Another big item collaborating with HR risk management, the FEMA reimbursement and insurance reimbursements. We've received 6.5 million of insurance and 1.3 million of FEMA. Shannon is the point person administratively working with FEMA and insurance so it's a collaborative effort, a team effort and there's a lot that goes on to work through the process and receive those funds. Accomplishment for the team or the department -- we received GFOA certificate of achievement for our financial statements and we'll apply for that again for fiscal year 25 when we finish that up in the next couple weeks. You can see a picture of the team there and they kind of make it all happen. I couldn't do it without them. Thanks to the team. And last slide covers number of significant grants the city has received. We continuously seek out the grants and other funding sources and this shows the number of grants received over the past several years. As you can see, almost $10 million in grants we received. So in a nutshell that's what we've got. >> Quick question. Are the grants just for this previous fiscal year? >> Know they're cumulative. >> It covers the last five years. The top ones are the most recent that are currently ongoing. You get lower on the list and those are some of the older ones but we'd like to show what we received. >> Thank you very much. >> Hello. How are you? >> H -- not super exciting. >> Introduce yourself because a lot of people don't know you. >> I am Shannon, director of Risk Management and Human Resources. Very behind the scenes. I don't deal with that many residents so I'll make this quick and painless. There is a party of two, me and Karmen, the HR assistant, so we handle all the HR and risk functions. We manage the employee lifestyle so we do the recruiting, onboarding, background checks com a screens and medical and physical and we do all of their payroll records and we do payroll biweekly. Carmen is the payroll guru who does all the payroll recording that happens on a quarterly basis and we do all the W-2 in-house for our employees. We oversee the employee benefit programs. We have a lot of different benefits for employees and we do health, dental, vision, life insurance come a long term disability and we have an EAP program and we have a discount center through the EAP. There's a bunch of benefits for the employees that we do on our open enrollment and I will come back every year to do the health renewal and long term disability renewal. So we also do all the risk management efforts. I handle all the claims, whether it be auto accidents, general liability, worker's compensation. We have a quarterly safety committee that I do coordinate with different members of the city, different employees and we have -- and a Marina employee, fire department and we all come together and we talk about different issues that we see throughout the city and how we can be safer and what we can do to make it a better environment for our employees. We do all the lines of insurance -- I do reconcile the health bill every month, life bill, traceability and we do the property and casualty insurance recorder along with general liability. And then we do FEMA claims which are fun. FEMA claims are never ending. They are years long and they -- we work closely with FDEM, the state, because they have a portion of our claims they pay as well and you'll see a slide that breaks down -- and we develop and maintain our personal policies and you also -- our personnel to update in April so thanks for that. We do the volunteer and the internship handbook and application and we have to run the background checks for every volunteer for the city and then we also do our wonderful labor laws and we work with our insurance carrier who has like a handful of attorneys and I can bounce ideas off of. I bother attorney salesman on a regular basis and then we do negotiations. We have two police and a fire -- and I assist with that. So that is HR in a nutshell. Here are some of our statistics. Last year we received a 1.5 increase on our health insurance which was very exciting for the city. And we only had a 10% increase on the property in general liability which is also very great considering our claims that we've had. We revise the personnel manual and hosted a luncheon and there's wonderful pictures of our luncheon and there's me and Carmen and again, she's a godsend and we all love her. Then we have 200 employees that we manage payroll and HR functions for and our list of -- from January 2025 to current, what kind of claims we had. In my opinion those aren't super high which is nice, only 12 worker's Comp claims out of our employees and ten auto and -- so our employees are wonderful and they're very cautious and they do what they're supposed to. And I couldn't be happier. And then this slide, I'll preface with -- it looks a little wonky. The Hurricane Helene column is stressful because we did not make money off the storm. I'm going to say we didn't make money. It looks like we did but we didn't. So in the current expenses, that doesn't include -- we have not had any current expenses to the South Basin, the floating docks or the Casino itself. So you're going to add lots of millions of dollars in there once we get there and these are actual paid invoices. Then we have our Nfip claims and PNC is our property casualty and then at the bottom is what we have received from FEMA. The only one on this list we can say is pretty final is Debbie. Debbie, that is done and it costs the city about $24,000 for Debbie. The other ones are a work in progress and these numbers have already changed because we've done a check run and my expenses have changed. This was fun for the five minutes that it was true and it has been updated. So that's what I have. >> I know that the beach costs us a lot of money. So where did we put that? Did we put that against Helene and not Nilton? >> The beach was Milton. >> The beach was Milton and only certain parts of the beach were covered under insurance, like the lights, fence, the stand was not and since it was not an engineered beach, FEMA did not cover the beach either. Since then Candace has done a heck of a job to make sure it will be considered an engineered beach. He's meeting with beach Bob from FEMA and moving forward and we will make sure it's an engineered beach so we can get reimbursement. >> Thank you. Thank you very much. >> Good evening. I'm Clark Stryker combat development director. Community development basically with three individual divisions permitting, planning and code enforcement. What we have that occurred in the last 15 months which was a scope of this request for information, we had 21,035 incoming and outgoing phone calls, 94,209 incoming and outcoming emails and 3240 in person contacts Inter-department. Some of our accomplishments as a community development department, we implemented the four software. We have a contract with them and we are continually training with them and we just had our last meeting on 4/28 and we have another meeting scheduled for 5/12 that is training for how to use the -- in the case of damages. We've also executed contract -- to have Lemoine provide us people to -- they've also worked with us previously to provide us help to do the substantial damage as well as detailed damage assessments after the fact. >> If we need them. We're assuming we'll never need them again. I said if we need >> We are absolutely hoping we never have to -- >> No title based. >> But we are prepared. And they will give us whoever we need depending on the severity of the storm to be able to accomplish those damage assessments. We won't be able to be relying on a private provider brought to us by the state. That was a situation prior. We are continuing -- we are constantly converting our forms into fillable forms, putting them on our websites. We're probably a good ways away or through it but we do have some work to continue. We are also having ongoing renovations in our departments and we have split up the permit so one is at one counter and one's at another counter and it alleviates some congestion and confusion through the permitting process. You can see that we issued in the same period 3297 permits, elected 1,000,456 687 in review fees and we issued 3215 contractor permits because we have a separate permit now for owner builders. Of those 3124 had reviews completed and we also issued 82 owner builder permits in that time period and those had 305 plan reviews completed for owner builder. 37 of the permits that were applied for were new residential building permits and 29 of those had been issued. Also three new commercial buildings applied for and two of those had been issued. Also in that time frame we completed 10,385 inspections. So we go to permitting achievements. One of our -- one of our permit technicians became certified. This is an international code conference. It's really not a requirement as of yet in the state to be certified but she did become certified. When we do our next I o rating, that certification will help improve our ISO rating. All of our permitting forms have been made fillable and are on the website. Updated website -- we've updated the website. Our page on the website with relevant, useful permitting instructions and information. We've created a standard operating procedure from permit processing and try to eliminate some of the little mistakes that happened during that process. A lot of those pertain to how permits are submitted on the portal and we have to try to catch those and correct them before they become a permit. So we have also made payments for permits available on the portal in addition to the full payments and in-person payments that we already take. Increasing availability -- to review by making a dedicated building -- they also provide our inspections. We have improved our ISO rating from a 4 to a 3. As a number goes down it's better. For our part it pertains to building code effectiveness rating scheduled. Some of that information is used. Like FEMA grants -- let's see. We're still in the process of -- we are in the process right now of getting new countertops, giving people a little more area at the counter -- and things like that. Our planning and zoning division -- we've had five site plan reviews, various applications, one conditional use approved and six doggy dining permits issued -- we've done eight interpretation letters -- three new address and applications and seven sidewalk cafe permits and 743 floodplain reviews and 757 planning reviews. Mark Griffin, our planner, was promoted to acting planning administrator and he also became certified -- as a floodplain manager. The city actually maintained this reading for CRS of a 6, which relates to a 20% discount of flood insurance. And comprehensive plan was adopted and approved by the city. Code enforcement, we had 2258 code enforcement cases in that period of time and 1728 open code cases and 530 activity code cases. We've also had 18 partial hearings in that period of time. Our code enforcement officers collaborated with the owners realtors and contractors for compliance very heavily. Improved public safety by addressing hazardous conditions and we also hire new code enforcement officer 1 to fill that vacant position. Clear and transparent presentations at all special hearings and I don't know if any of you have seen some of the Special magistrate hearings but they are very detailed and all the information is there. Our code enforcement officer 2, which is the primary code enforcement officer, implemented a connect suite for electronic certified returns mailings -- it saves us about $1.58 per mailing and we also did utilize late or light duty fleet police officer and keep him employed for four months. While he was -- (inaudible) his team attended the FACE, the Florida Association of Code Enforcement and he's also a member of the Tampa Bay Association of Code Enforcement and attends their meetings. That pretty much covers it for us. >> Thank you. >> We have a question. >> I do get a couple of asking emails for the permitting for the IVs in the yard. Is that not a common ask or is it just -- and for permitting in the yard? That would be the second -- it's just >> Maybe it's just prevalent in my -- >> If it's above permitting it's probably going to be in the public record requests, sanitation and pickups in that section. >> You don't? Okay. We do have an application for that. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Thank you so much. >> I think a lot of times people when they talk about code enforcement or the permitting, they really don't understand that there's three segments involved with community development. >> Mayor, I'd like to take the opportunity to introduce Sonia. She's done unbelievable activity and this is the one department that besides sanitation, it touches every resident. >> Hello. [laughter] >> My name is Sonia Lever. >> You are the touching person. >> I'm the director of Utility billing customer service. So this is a quick snapshot of the activities that our department has managed throughout the typical year. So these are probably the numbers you would see. So we have about 6000 service locations that we support throughout the city. And our customers contact us in a variety of ways. So we have our regulars that we call them that visit us at the front counter in our lobby and we also have -- we've noticed an uptick in a couple other areas, the digital areas sort of like the first presentation was talking about. So we've received over 14,000 calls and we've responded to over ten thousand emails and we've sent over 14000 text notifications to our customers concerning their utility service accounts. So beyond customer communication, we also coordinate operations with the public works department. Our department has created over 7000 service orders to be sent out as well as 1300 leak investigations and these are my favorite. So these are the meter data logs where if someone is concerned about their consumption, questioning if they have a leak, this is what we pull and it shows an hour by hour consumption log and we can research and maybe find a possible issue. So we have also completed 218 public records requests and I don't want to miss this one. We have over 2000 residents currently enrolled and caring for the environment by being enrolled in E-billing. What this means is your bill is actually sent to the email address on file, which helps save on postage, paper and envelopes. So this is the team behind the numbers. So this is the utility billing team from left to right. We have Yolanda, Susan, Craig, Justine and myself and together every day we work with residents answering questions, resolving issues and coordinating services throughout the city. If you've ever called the city with the utility question or if you call the main line and press zero, it has a switchboard -- you're talking to one of us. Okay so looking ahead, we've got really exciting future projects. Up our sleeves. So you are getting a sneak peek at what our plans are here. We've got a new billing system and we plan on -- this is priority number one for us. We are currently on a system from 2003 so our plan is to upgrade, replace the system which is going to improve our efficiency, strengthened our reporting and expand digital services for residents. All of these things actually work together in tandem. So the next one is the Army network so this is actually a public works project that was brought before you all that you voted on and approved. Ami -- do you know what that stands for? It's advanced meter infrastructure. So these also are called radio towers -- stuff like that. So what this does is it's going to provide more frequent meter data collection. Let me say also that this isn't my project. This is run by public works so Kendricks Anderson, our public works director and Wayne, our utility superintendent -- they are leading this project but we're all going to benefit from it. What this does is it's going to give our office more frequent meter data collection. Currently right now we use an Amr system so that's where our guys go out in the field and read one time a month with this Ami technology. We would be able to get reads every single day, possibly even more than that. With that information, we would be able to identify potential leaks much sooner, so daily instead of every 30 days. And with that information we would be able to reach out to our customer base and let them know that they have a possible issue at their property. So the last part of this is an enhanced customer portal. We want to take the information that we currently have in our hands once this is complete and pass that along to every single resident to the city of Gulfport. We want people to be able to track their own water usage, we want people to be able to manage their utility accounts online, and the coolest feature I think is to enroll in water usage alerts. You would have the option to sign up for notification that's either an email or text. You could set your own parameter. In that system you could say notify me if I use over 100 gallons per day in the system would send you a notification which I think is pretty cool. So all together, we believe that these projects would help the city become more transparent, efficient and responsive to our residents utility services. Thank you very much. [applause] maybe I'm Sonia, just a minute. I know I have one but I think Council Member Webb is first. >> What's your timeline on the billing system Ami network and customer portal? >> We went out to bid for the billing system and it's currently in review. I am sworn to secrecy and can't really talk about it. >> So when do you think -- >> So this fiscal year do you think you'll make a decision on this? It's exciting. >> The towers -- Kendricks can talk more about the timeline with that but that is coming up soon. And once we actually have the billing system and the towers functioning we would then add on that enhanced customer portal because you need those other two pieces. >> Thank you. >> Do you have any questions? Any questions over here? >> I have to tell you, I have the advantage -- she's looking this direction -- I've never seen somebody get so excited over talking about utility service improvements. [laughter] >> She's almost jumping out of her skin talking about this. Which is exciting to me. But I also had the opportunity to sit with her one time when she was explaining to me that metrics that she has so that if somebody says well, I have a water leak -- my bill is way too high and I don't know why -- she sat with me one time and explained to me well, I can tell you they get up at 6:00 every morning. I can tell you they take their shower at 6:20. I can tell you they started the coffee and I can tell you what time -- >> I'm not looking through your windows. I promise you that. >> She was just able to walk through the whole entire process and the funniest part was when we had one person that was saying their bill was too high and it was just them and their wife and they didn't understand why and I begged and pleaded and begged and pleaded to get them to come in -- we found out there were actually children they failed to mention. Thank you so >> You are very welcome. >> Public works. >> Good evening Council. Public Works director. Before for begin, well doctor Hagood is here, I have the luxury of working with her and her scholars team and it's such a pleasure that they are here presenting and I definitely hope we can get some future funding so we can support their groups and initiatives. Public Works -- I don't want to bore you with too many slides. I have 23. I'm just Messing with you. We have eight. So public works department, we have 37 full time employees and we consist of our fleet management, our utility division which has sewer, stormwater and water and we have our sanitation in streets and we also have our building maintenance and our parks division. I didn't want to bore you all with too much data because that would be 22 slides but trash collected in the year 2025 is 10,500 tons and recycling is 618 tons and the sidewalk repair and replace -- this is 2025 numbers and once we complete phase two we will have an updated quantity for council to present so as of 2025 we have 2200ft² and road repairs, we had 8326ft² and that doesn't include any capital road repairs which I'll show you on the following slides. We 27,000ft² and we had been utilizing granite gravel which has been a very effective program that Council approved a few years ago to give us money to apply that material. Especially in our beach areas where we're having prone flooding. Granite gravel is a great program and once again, we have a long list -- if I can let the public know we are keeping track of the list and we are addressing them as we go along. After the hurricane we had quite a few signs end up missing and drifting away so we had 112 sign repairs last year and the storm pipes doubled so we had 915ft of storm pipe. So in 2025 council approved a $300,000 project to inspect, clean and inspect our storm system. That project consisted of various areas throughout the city starting from the south and beach end and then we worked in the Simpson area and did some work in the Marina so we tried to include all parts of the city and we did 18,000 linear feet of inspection and cleaning and with that data we'll take and put that into our GIS program where we can utilize the pipe condition assessment program and we can identify where our areas where we need to do repair and replacement and not necessarily upgrades or flooding but basically address where we're having issues with for example in the beach area -- we have quite a few corrugated metal pipe and as we know, salt water and metal don't mix real well and so items like that, Dwayne and his staff -- his utility superintendent. His staff are working on identifying priority areas so we can come back to council for reports for what we need to accomplish. And you can see on the picture, that's just one of our -- that's an actual photo we can't share of one of the pipes and you c