‘GMA’ in town; updates on several other issues

‘GMA’ to broadcast segments from Biloxi

Biloxi and south Mississippi will be in the national spotlight again Wednesday morning when Robin Roberts of “Good Morning America”: hosts several segments from Biloxi.

During the program, which airs locally from 7 to 9 a.m., Roberts and representatives of the Disney company, including Mickey Mouse, are scheduled to make a significant contribution to representatives of the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Gulf Coast.

Local children and others are scheduled to appear in several of the Biloxi segments.

Roberts, of course, is a Pass Christian product who cut her broadcast teeth at WLOX-TV, the ABC affiliate in Biloxi.

Reviving the Renaissance: Multi-lingual and multi-faceted

Six of the 12 committee chairs in the Reviving the Renaissance initiative have posted minutes or meeting notices on the city web site, where Renaissance visitors will also find a Vietnamese version of key information. (The RTR committee is grateful to a volunteer from the Kaiser Permanente Hospital Network in California for donating her translation skills to this effort.)

To read the available committee reports – Affordable Housing, Finance, Historic Preservation, Non-Government Organizations, Tourism and Transportation – click here.

Biloxi library books and documents coming home.

From Biloxi librarian Charlene Longino:

On Thursday, April 5, two tractor trailers chockfull of library books and documents will be coming home to the Biloxi library.

The materials, which were literally snatched from the mud and debris left in the library by Hurricane Katrina , were sent to Chicago for emergency salvage treatment.

Included were irreplaceable maps and documents from the local history collection, which in the past had been an invaluable resource for research on Gulf Coast history. The surviving book collection of the Biloxi library also made the long trip to Illinois for treatment.

The library, although cleaned and gutted, has not yet been repaired and will serve as a secure warehouse for the materials unto they can be sorted and transported to the temporary location of the local history and genealogy department.

Currently this department is situated in the meeting room of the West Biloxi branch library on Pass Road.

Special Olympics fish fry off to record start

Rodney McGilvary, Biloxi’s assistant chief of police and the state’s director of the Special Olympics Law Enforcement Torch Run, reports that Friday’s Special Olympics fish fry is off to a huge start.

“We’ve already had 200 advance orders,” McGilvary said of the annual fish fry, which this year will be held this Friday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lopez Quave Public Safety Center. (An earlier e-mail erroneously had the time from 11 a.m. to noon.) Those interested can dine in, take out or have five or more orders delivered by volunteer officers. Hamburger plates also will be prepared by Biloxi police officers and firefighters.

For more information, click here.

News and notes

Preservation heroes: Do you know someone who is working to save a historic structure damaged in Hurricane Katrina? If so, the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Mississippi Heritage Trust want to recognize their efforts to preserve the rich architectural legacy of the Gulf Coast. To read more, click here.

A helping hand: Biloxi and south Mississippi have been on the receiving end of assistance from cities across the country, but a group coming to Biloxi this week will be asking for help. Key department heads from Galveston, Texas will be in town Thursday to gather information from their Biloxi counterparts to help update the city’s storm plan.

Condo report: The Community Development staff has updated the online condominium development report, which is posted on the Community Development page of the city web site. To see the report now, click here.