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Council agrees to reduce frequency of North Beach stormwater updates, consider citywide rename
Summary
Public Works reported continued stormwater work and contracting related to North Beach and citywide backlogs; council asked staff to provide quarterly or renamed citywide stormwater resiliency updates instead of more frequent North Beach-only briefings.
Public Works Director Marcus Williamson told the Clearwater City Council on March 6 that staff are preparing contracts, adding contractor redundancies and running levels-of-service analyses as part of stormwater work connected to North Beach and other citywide locations.
Williamson said the department is "starting to work, preparation for the storms" and is updating contracts and meeting with contractors, including firms for barnacle cleaning and design work. He said the city is addressing a large backlog of stormwater maintenance, including clearing ditches and creeks, and that staff are engaging private-property owners who may not have realized they are responsible for certain drainage maintenance.
City Manager Jennifer Poirier suggested the council consider whether the regular agenda item should be retitled to reflect citywide stormwater issues rather than only North Beach. Multiple council members, including Vice Mayor Menino and Councilmember Shader, agreed: the council supported reducing update frequency and renaming the item to reflect broader stormwater resiliency reporting.
Vice Mayor Menino said the updates were important but could be quarterly, and Councilmember McCadden and others said many affected homeowners, neighborhoods and associations share responsibility for drainage and that the city has been learning from past storms. Councilmember Ryan Cotton said the North Beach population affected by the storms has declined because many homes are uninhabitable, supporting a reduction in frequency.
No formal motion was recorded to change the agenda title at the March 6 meeting; the discussion produced direction to staff to consider quarterly or retitled updates and to continue operational stormwater work and contract preparations. Williamson noted some work is informed by FEMA lessons learned and that design work will feed longer-term projects for North Beach.
