These are unofficial notes, based upon my observation of the Town Council agenda meeting last night. Some of these things will be on the agenda and voted on at tonight's meeting.

Drainage / Tree project etc.

The Town and engineers have come up with a new path for the drainage project. This path will allow the town to only dispose of 2 to 3 trees on the Beinville right away. The new route is to weave around most of the existing trees on the right away. There will be additional trees that will have to be removed on the private properties that this project goes across, the total amount of trees is undetermined at this time. The engineer knows that it is very important to keep the number of trees lost to a minimum. ADECA (sic) will be in Mobile today, so is willing to come to the island to approve the new path of the project. Some portion of the road /roads will have to be cut to place the drainage. These roads will be patched and then patched with asphalt.

Mobile county is going to be coming to the island in the next couple of weeks to re-asphalt the worse roads on the island.

Proposed levee for Bienville
The city is meeting with the EMA on May the 8th. The reason they are meeting with the (Alabama) EMA instead of FEMA is that the EMA is the go between for FEMA. This is the path that needs to be taken to get the ear of FEMA. The Mayor restated that the levee is to protect Bienville not to replace any sort of south beach protection. But FEMA has said they will not participate in another temporary berm on the south shore line. Steve (Town Council) brought up placing a hard wall on the south shore line. The idea is that this wall would hold the sand in place while the island would nourish itself south of the wall. The environment issue was brought up but Joyce feels we could get permitting for this permanent fix. There is a town meeting at the Catholic Church on the island on May 13th at 6 p.m. There was talk of having a live feed for this meeting. Unfortunately this is to expensive. The town is going to tape this meeting for people to view at a later date.

The city has received a grant from the oil companies, this grant was significantly less than what the town would expect since we are on the front lines. Some town officials have meet with the grant agency and feel they were heard about our concerns. I am sorry I do not know the name of the grant. Thank you Town Council!

The town put out proposals to the property management company's on the island to represent the Island's Guest House. They received 2 proposals, from Tyson and Island Resort Management. The council will vote on which company to have represent the guest house, tonight.

The TC will vote on whether or not to repave the south side roads off of Bienvile, tonight. If they choose to pave the roads the town williccur a 15% cost. The other alternative is to use crush rock, like is there now. The issues is that whatever we do FEMA will only replace what is existing. If it is Pavement they will replace pavement if it is crushed rock they will replace crushed rock. Although it has been brought up that it is much more expensive to the city to put in ashalt.

Holiday Isles project - there is a developer that is looking at developing HI into a conference and convention center.. If the offer goes through the developer would have a year to begin this project. There would have to be off site parking, the site is TBD

There was much concern about holding the Fourth of July Fireworks on the west end beach. A lot of the residents on the island feel that the council is breaking tradition. The decision to hold the fireworks on the west end beach was made at the last meeting.

More after tonight's Town Council meeting, held at 7:00 p.m.