For many people who gathered at Port Arthur City Hall on Tuesday night, determined talk from elected leaders about fighting area flooding likely seemed too little, too late.

The City Council meeting space on the fifth floor was packed with people who’d experienced flooding in their homes for the second time in five months last weekend.

Those flood victims were not permitted to speak to the council, which was gathered in regular session, but to merely listen. In many ways, what the council members said — their pronouncement began with a mea culpa — was wholly appropriate.

The city wasn’t prepared, said District 4 Councilman Harold Doucet, who seemed to speak sincerely and candidly.

Ya think? Most residents, who’ve passed mountains of roadside debris for months, reminders of Hurricane and Tropical Storm Harvey destruction, knew the city wasn’t prepared for more flooding.

When heavy rains fell Saturday — as much as 8 or 10 inches, in some neighborhoods — the trash blocked the ditches that were supposed to carry water to the city’s pumps and into the rest of the drainage system. Rainfall in neighborhoods like Dominion Ranch and Port Acres and Stonegate, unable to escape through the drainage ditches, simply rose toward the streets and residences beyond them. Doucet said Palomar, El Vista and Montrose were affected, too.

The result was a second round of flooding for many residents in those neighborhoods, some of whom had just moved back in after their homes were devastated during flooding last August.

Some residents told us the most recent flooding has convinced them to move and leave their misery behind them. Others said flooding occurs whenever it rains, no matter the volume of rainfall.

Mayor Derrick Freeman and City Council members spoke about their own losses during Harvey. Many council members and city employees were adversely affected by the flooding, which rose with neither fear nor favor toward anyone. The rising tide covered us all. We understand.

But residents gathered Tuesday didn’t come to hear about the council members’ hard luck. They wanted answers.

“It’s not going to be like it was in the past,” Doucet said. “You’ll see people out there working on the problem and the City Council will be watching.”

But why did it take a second flood to make council members so resolute? The August hurricane and flood made coastal Texas the site of the second-costliest flood in U.S. history — $125 billion in human misery. Why was that not enough of a wake-up call?

Residents whose homes flooded — again! — last weekend should have had the opportunity to ask their elected leaders that simple question Tuesday night. They weren’t given that chance.

Instead, they were told the council would “be watching.”

So voters themselves need to be watching the council.