City Council - Regular Meeting

Good to go.

All right.

Y'all ready? Okay, we're gonna go ahead and call the June 16th, 2026 City Council meeting to order. We'll start with a roll call. One, two, three, four, five, six, and that large is not present. Now we'll start with an invocation. Councilwoman Moynihan, would you like to lead us?

Father, Son, Holy Spirit, amen. Gracious God, we are grateful for the opportunity to serve our community. Guide us with wisdom and strength and clarity in our decisions. Bless this meeting and our city and our shared commitment to the common good. Amen.

thank you moving on to the approval of the agenda I did want to make one amendment under executive session since we're gonna enter into that or I guess after the attorneys report we'll add it under Valentine properties versus the City of Bay St. Louis and then also SWK LLC versus City of Bay St. Louis will make that item B and C And then other than that, is there any other agenda amendments needed? Okay We'll move on to announcements. Item 2A, July 2nd, the city will host the Mississippi Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo. Princesses, details are to follow. 2B, July 2nd through 4th, the 42nd annual OOG Crab Festival will be taking place. 2C, July 3rd, city offices will be closed for the 4th of July holiday. And July 7th will be our next city council meeting. We do not have any guests tonight, and we'll move on to our public forum regarding agenda items. Do we have anyone signed up? Okay. Since we've added it to the agenda, we'll make it an agenda item if you want to do it now or later. Yeah, we'll move it to this one.

I signed up on the non-agenda item, but he just added it to the agenda. Are we back live right now?

If not, we'll... First off thank you for adding it to agenda because some of us

been following this since 2017 and would just kind of like to get an update because it just is dragging on the city's not getting going anywhere that developers not going anywhere at some point you know and I'm gonna attempt to contact I know that you guys came but I can contact the developer and say what are you willing to do maybe we can get this thing off dead center because city needs something to happen, the developer needs something to happen, and we're just kind of deadlocked over little minor things. You know, it talks about the Drake map not being right, and there's any other, well, I was looking at this, because I'm doing some documentation on my properties, and it refers to the Drake map. Louis Moms' property next door to me that's deeded, it refers to the Drake map, so we need to get off the incense. Thank you very much for putting it on the agenda. Let's see if we can't do something positive rather than just throwing balls at each other.

I would encourage you to run for judge. Maybe you can get processes moving much faster.

They really would like me.

Maybe you should run for judge. You can help the whole legal system out. We'd all appreciate it.

I think I'm talking about that. I would make a note. We've had a lot of rain lately, and I'm going to go and look at what's going on in the old, the Shieldsburg subdivision. We seem to have a tremendous change, or a change, I would say a significant change in the water flow pattern. down near Ramanita and 3rd Street where I live and I'm gonna go and check ditches and I'll let the guys know but it's like where the water used to flow from the cemetery toward St. Charles it's not flowing that way and it's doubling up coming back the other way something just doesn't look right so I'll just kind of put y'all on notice as if I find something I'll let them know but it may be just we got too darn much water coming down on wet ground That could be the problem, but it appears to be a significant change all of a sudden. We never had the flooding across the 3rd Street on a regular basis until recently. No, it doesn't appear to be.

Just to tack on to you, Mike, I know the ditches seem like there is a ditch right by the cemetery that probably needs to just be cleaned out right on the side of the cemetery on 3rd. There's a culvert that's just – but other than that, I mean, what we've seen – but it's the first time I've seen it that it has come over Third Street and actually flows. And then even Central got reports of it going over by Bay Oaks and Central, which is definitely uncommon.

I don't think – I can't remember even with the tropical storm that we've – They've been in there working, opening drains up. I think it would flow better. Maybe that's what it is.

Maybe it's flowing better down to me and it can't get away fast enough.

We still have to go across the road on Third – You know where the ditch goes to the beach through there? Mm-hmm. The one further down.

Has that been, is it the one that's going parallel by Christ Episcopal's property?

No, that one's okay. We can go through there. Okay. The other one down there a little further. Might be right there. We finally got right in. Okay. Further down. Okay. We'll check those ditches in there.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen and ladies. Thank you, Michael.

Okay.

We'll move on to our minutes approval. I'll call for a motion to approve the minutes of June 2nd, 2026. Do I have a motion?

Motion.

Motion by Councilman DeSalvo. Do I have a second? Any discussion? Vote to motion.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye. Motion carries 6-0. Moving on to our consent agenda. Does anyone have anything they would like to pull off for discussion? If not, I will go ahead and call for a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented. Do I have a motion?

Moved and motioned.

Do I have a second?

Second.

Second by Councilman DeSalvo. Any discussion? Vote the motion.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye. Motion carries 6-0. Moving on to project updates. Jason is not here tonight. The only thing on that, Nancy's going to go over for Wednesday, I think it is.

Is that correct?

Tomorrow.

Yeah. For one of the grants.

MDEQ.

For... McDonald Field for the upgrades and all that. Her and Jason will be over there for that. And hopefully we can get some funding for that.

Thank you. Okay, nothing under ordinances. We'll move on to city clerk's report. I will call for a motion to approve the docket of claims 26-030, dated June 16th, 2026, and the amount of $1,699,811.24. Do I have a motion? Motion. Motion by Councilman DeSalvo. Do I have a second? David, second. Any discussion? Vote the motion.

Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye. Motion carries 6-0. Moving on to 9B. I'll call for a motion to approve the docket of claims 26-031 special dated June 16th, 2026 and the amount of $545,600. Do I have a motion? Moining motion. Do I have a second? Second. Second by Councilman DeSalvo. Any discussion? Vote the motion.

Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Motion carries 6-0. Mayor's agenda. We did have some discussion in regards to setting up the work.

They have everything done, you know, with the road study and everything. All they want to know is a good time for it to come to the council, maybe for the next meeting, a half hour or something, just to present what they found and any discussions, anything, you know, figure maybe 30 minutes before next week, maybe come for that. That's okay with everybody. On July 7. July 7. Yeah, seven, July 7. See if they're available to be available five o'clock.

Anything else?

No, just we'll have budget starting, you know, everything starting up and trying to set the first budget workshop July 9th, I think it is.

All right. Council business? Do you have anything, Councilwoman Morning?

No, I don't have anything other than the MDEQ tomorrow, but I'd also like to thank Ronnie Vanny for being very diligent in his job. And he's got a good crew that he is managing quite well. And I don't think they get enough thanks. I know there's some drainage issues. that a lot of people have been talking about um but i i really feel that he will get to the bottom of it and he's working very hard so thank you to ronnie and public works that's all i got

So I've been away a little bit, but I've been getting some concerns about the park, MLK Park, mostly the bathrooms. They're not being locked at night. And from my understanding, the fire department does not have a key to that park, restaurant specifically.

Somebody had taken that over for a while.

It was Ms. Beverly, but I still believe someone was locking them each night.

We'll check and see. We'll look at trying to outsource it with them. Right.

And I know they've had some issues too about things that they come across when they do come out to the parks late at night as well to lock them up. But I think there's been some damage, I don't know specifically of what, but I have seen them running like extension cords and stuff from there. So they definitely need to be closed when the park closes at 8. The only other thing is those basketball courts. I know we were trying to go over the paint that we had to see if it was still good. I'm assuming that's not the case because I haven't heard anything back about it. I know Ronnie was looking into it. We bought those $5,000.

We bought like $18,000 three sets of paint for those two courts.

Right.

And they can't pick up some of it. I don't know what all they pick up or whatever. That was all on Friends of the Park was supposed to be doing that.

Yeah, I would say about two months ago is when I talked to Ronnie last, and he was supposed to be getting the paint tested to see if it was still good, because it was just standing, I guess, the past couple of years. So if that's the case and it's no good, I wanted to see if we had any funding left, because the estimate's about $10,000 per court. And then maybe use that before the end of the year, maybe when it gets colder and the park's not in use, can at least get one of the two courts, and then maybe budget something when that time comes in July.

We'll check on that paint and see what we got.

Thank you.

No, we just addressed when Cliff was up here and Mike, we can just take a look and see what Ronnie sees north of 3rd and Central, if there's any kind of, do you think, over by Shieldsboro, that retention pond, is there any issues with that that we're aware of?

Not what they have now.

No, okay. No. Okay. Just trying to think what any other changes that could be in place.

No, that's what I'm saying. Even in there, nothing on the part they cleared has been changed as far as drainage goes in there.

Okay. And you had mentioned we got access to one of those main ditches so that we can get that cut. That could be alongside, behind 3rd Street and the beach.

Yeah.

Okay. Any ETA on when that could be accomplished? Cut? Yeah. Yeah.

He's on a regular rotation. He usually keeps all our main drains cut once a month. Okay. I know he's missing a part of some type of sensor. They're waiting to come in now, a heat sensor. Uh-huh. And don't want to run it without that, you know, working pool. So he's waiting on that to come in. But he'll be getting it in and making rounds in the next week or two.

Okay. All right. I'll check back with you. Thank you.

I'm just going to turn some work orders in for a couple of requests I've had. So I'll be getting those in shortly.

Okay, I'm good.

Good as well. Moving on to public forum regarding non-agenda items. Do we have anyone signed up for that? Okay. We had Mr. Cliff already speak. Ms. Anita Warner.

native warner 417 third street also on behalf of the live oak registry but before i start talking about trees with respect to drainage that dip in front of my house that they dug up and fixed it's sinking again just want y'all to know because when you're driving down the street you can see that it's starting to sink again i don't know what's causing it and mike i know we're doing that overlay um all the way from sycamore down to bay oaks on third street before doing that

Before doing that, could we see, I mean, I know we've scoped that and looked and see where there could be that breakdown, correct?

Yeah, and it may not have just been built up high enough where it just sank down. I'm not sure how much it sank down.

It's full of water. I mean, the rest of the street, yeah.

It could just be where the asphalt wasn't high enough to start with where it laid down. We'll check and see.

I mean, but I see it every day. That's why I'm bringing it to your attention. Okay, back to trees. I want to talk about the suit that Mr. Kearney and Ms. Norman have filed against the city, although I have not seen it. You will recall that these people wanted to cut down two oak trees at their house on DeMontlison. Those both exceed the size that is protected by statute here in the city. Their expert only looked at pictures. We had experts from the city and the arborists look at them, and they both recommended things that could be done to save those trees, i.e., start by trimming them. In point of fact, the tree nearest to the street is no danger to the house at all, doesn't extend that way. The larger tree, which is further back, which its limb extends toward the tree, could easily be trimmed up. But these folks were not willing to do any of those things, so now they've turned around and sued us. I think that we need to be firm on saying we protect trees in this city. We have a statute that does. We have a live oak registry and we have a lot of trees in this city that are near people's houses and nobody else wants to cut them all down. So I highly recommend that we do whatever we need to to oppose this particular lawsuit. And the other thing I will say is something that John Oman mentioned a couple of times. now that we're doing our new code we should have a tree board so that going around and looking at the trees is not the responsibility of the building inspector but you get people who know something about trees master gardeners gardeners arborists interested citizens and let them do that heavy lifting from the ground up and then we'll move on from there thank you very much thank you

Okay, we do not have anyone else signed up. So we will move on to the attorney's report.

I have three matters that I would recommend discussing in an executive session, just because public knowledge could be a threat to the litigation, and they are three matters, but one of them is the Kevin and Lori, that is an appeal from a decision made by the city council, and the other two are Chancery Court matters pertaining to altering a plat.

Okay. So I guess I need to make a motion to enter into a closed session to determine the need? Correct. Okay. I'll call for a motion to enter into a closed session to determine the need for executive session.

motion motion by councilman DeSalvo do I have a second second let's make sure the motion specifically says that's to talk about the Kevin I guess it's Kearney on and Laurie Norman versus the city of Bay St. Louis the Ballantyne properties LLC versus the city of Bay St. Louis and SWK LLC versus the city of Bay St. Louis and I had a second by councilman Lewis any other discussion motion

Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carried 6-0.