City Council Special Meeting, Retreat Day 1 Morning session on 08/26/25, Clip 1 of 3.

Members of city council, in accordance with the Virginia Beach Code, section 2-21, and by special authority vested in me as mayor, I hereby call for a special meeting of the Virginia Beach City Council on Tuesday, August 26, 2025, and Wednesday, August uh 27:25. 5 beginning at 8:30 Virginia Beach Convention Center, 1019 Street, Suite 2. The purpose of the special meeting is to hold the city council retreat listed in

the publish agenda. Sincerely, Bobby D.

Uh, but thank you all for being here. We are here and I just want to thank everyone for being here. You know, this is a time to pause and reflect and, you know, come together yet in public to talk about many of the discussions that we don't have the opportunity sometimes to talk about. We come here to kind of refocus and you know get our act together because once again you know we

take a look we are not the only city in the country you know confronting many of the realities of tough times and therefore it's up it really helps us to get know each other a little better but it also gives us time to you know really get you know deep into you know some of the you know most troubling issues that going forward. So once again, you know, these are very very purposeful and uh

you know, we have a lot of area to uh uh cover and uh you know, the first area that we're going to be covering is a very um you know, controversial discussion in the inter facility uh area and discussing with the facilitator. You know, just in times of time inconvenience, we'll have a timer on some of the discussions. Uh but once again please yeah it's a matter of being succinct but you know just say what's on

your m heart and mind and we want to hear from everybody going forward. Uh so once again I turn it over to our uh Patrick anything.

U Mr. Mayor I'll turn it over to Julie now. Julie's going to ask the council members to give a welcome and then talk about the things they want to discuss here today. And then I'll probably take a couple minutes at the end to kind of wrap up the focus action plan process and how it works in setting this um setting the the pace and the cadence for the city's work plan.

Okay. And if we could start with uh you know um Stacy, you know, did is this a point where you have you people state? Yeah, Mr. Mayor, I think it'll be good if you let Julie kind of lay the groundwork of what the ask is going to be for the council members.

Good morning, mayor. Um, members of council, thank you so much for having me back. Julie Brenman with Fountain Works.

I've got two members of my team with me today, Laura Gomez Nichols and Olive Newman. And we are really looking forward to the discussion uh today and tomorrow. I wanted to review the agenda for today and tomorrow and then we'll do um some some uh warm-up question to get you start thinking and the first deep discussion is going to be about the ITA.

You all have a folder in front of you with handouts that we'll be referencing during different parts. So the agenda is um it looks like on the left hand side it's up also up on the wall um behind the staff. So we're starting uh today with a welcome and we'll talk about the ITA for a good chunk of time. Staff needs direction on what council wants as next steps related to the ITA.

Um we're then going to after that take a break and talk about Virginia Beach's current context. So, the main um purpose originally for the retreat was to set a a 24-month focused action plan for the next two years. Two years ago, you set your priorities um and the staff developed a focused action plan. The um the purpose in doing this is to refresh that. You've got new members of council

and the focused action plan really gives staff direction for how to move forward.

As we think about mo moving forward, we think it's important to think about the current context you're operating in and just remind you of some of the accomplishments and demographics and trends before you think about um priorities. We'll then spend the rest of the day after that talking about your priorities and setting your priorities.

We're planning to adjourn today no later than 5:30. I know that's a long day. So, it's no later than 5:30. We'll come back tomorrow if there's anything we haven't um wrapped up today. We can finish talking about the focused action plan and priorities, but we think we'll get through that today. And then there's opportunity tomorrow for council discussion. Uh several of you have shared a few things that you want to

discuss at the retreat related to governance and some policies for the council to think about. So we've got time to do that tomorrow and we'll wrap up with you um tomorrow no later than 11:30. We'll then take the department directors and um work with them on everything they heard you all set as your priorities to start mapping out the action plan so that they can immediately um take it out

to the public to get their input and reflections on what you all have said and then they'll be able to um set their work plans for the next two years and bring it back to you I think in November for final adoption.

Um, as we work together, we've got in our sailboats over there some roles. Um, we as Fountain Works are here as facilitators. We're bringing you all together. We're going to make sure I tag team with the mayor. Everyone has an opportunity to speak and we stay on time. Um, you all in the center in the green boat, you are the participants.

This retreat is about you. People want to hear what your priorities are. We want to hear you discuss with each other. City staff here are city staff is here as subject matter experts. There'll be a couple of uh brief presentations and they're here for questions, but the discussion is really about you. And then the public is welcome to attend either in person or virtually. Hello out there.

Um as observers, this isn't a public hearing. So, this isn't the time for them to comment, but they are they are always at the center of everything you do. You're doing your work for the public.

Um, our rules at the bottom is we're hoping that you all can seek common understanding if not consensus. There are some issues where you're not going to all 11 of you agree, but we hope you all understand each other and understand the perspectives so staff can have the direction of moving forward. Um, uh, 10 of the 11 of you represent your districts, but we want to encourage you

to focus citywide. You're here for the, um, common good of the entire city. And then as the mayor said, I'm going to be using my little timer every now and then to make sure that um everyone has a chance to speak. We've got a lot to cover in the day and a half and want to make sure that we keep moving and um and have good conversations as well.

Any questions about our agenda?

All right. Um what we're going to start with is some opening. We've got a theme for today and tomorrow and that is we're building some sand castles. Um so you've got your um your bucket and your shovel in front of you. Um and I want you to think of the metaphor of when you're when you're building the future of the city, when you're building your sand castle, you might have a vision for how

you're constructing it. Um and sometimes it gets hard. Sometimes the sand isn't firm enough. Sometimes a wave comes up and um erases some of your progress, but you can keep working on it. And so we're we're going to over the next day and a half be thinking about how we're building sand castles as a metaphor for continuing to make progress for the city of Virginia Beach. So each of you has a

cute little envelope in your bucket.

Laura Laura h hand drew those little um sand castle pictures on there when she was um watching TV. So, she had fun drawing those in it. Um you each have a question. I think there's two questions.

And uh so with that, we're going to ask you to go around the room and introduce yourself and kind of set your intention for how we're going to be building our sand castles together for the next day and a half.

Um, there's two. If if you uh don't like one, you can flip it over and have the other.

Is anyone ready

and read read your question too?

Okay. Good morning everyone and welcome.

And I like the analogy of of the sailboats. Um so because it's all of us together, the facilitators, welcome fountain works. Don't put the timer on yet. Um but anyhow, and staff and the public. So uh this is my third or fourth uh retreat and I'm looking forward to it. So my question, if a genie granted you one sand castle related superpower in in parenthesis like endless sand or perfectly packed wet sand, what would

you choose?

So there are a lot of things to do with this question, but one is this is democracy. It's ruled by a majority. And so I think this council gets along very well. We are all very respectful. I think the public does respect us. We respect the public. So I just want that to continue that we work together. Um many of our votes are unanimous. Uh I think we have clear vision. That's what

this week or these two days are for is to clarify and refine that vision. and see where we are. That's my intention.

Um we can get lost in priorities. Uh we can do paralysis by analysis. But uh if the one superpower is that we continue to be act like one body, we're going to have some disagreements and I can name a few very quickly. But that's what again that's what democracy is about and this is what we are democratic uh council.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, Stacy.

Thank you. Um my question is what's important to teach a child when they first start building sand castles.

So I would start off by saying why are we building the sand castle? What's the purpose? And I would emphasize that it's an expression of yourself that you're building it the way you want to build it. And there'll never be another sand castle exactly like yours. It's unique to you and uh so do with it what you think reflects on you.

Thank you.

Okay, Josh.

Thanks, Mr. Mayor, and good to see everybody. Thank you again, Julie, for being here. You do great work, and glad to see you back.

Um, my question was, what are some unexpected things that can happen while you're building your sand castle? And, um, I thought of a couple things. Um, obviously, you know, waves and water crashing over the sand castle or the tide coming in and and uh, and then the condition of the sand itself. I mean, you could encounter dry sand that doesn't pack very well or wet sand that does. And um there well there's some

other things bad things I suppose that could happen to sand castles on a beach.

Um I water was a theme to me and it's certainly a theme to us. So um you know water can be a um provide an assist when you're building a sand castle by making it stronger. Um but it can also um wash it away. And um very much like Virginia Beach, water is our greatest asset. Um it's in our name beach and it's why people come here. It's why people

settled here and it's one of the I mean major reasons why everybody loves living here and visiting here. So um but as we all know water also presents it uh you know uh an existential threat and challenge to us. Um and it's one that we'll have to continue navigating over the generations. Um, but it's one that I think uh if you plan around and we uh and we have and we're becoming more

resilient um and we're better prepared these days to confront these threats and um I think we'll have a a great look in Sandcastle for many generations.

Okay, great cash.

Good morning everyone. Good to see this is my second retreat.

Okay. All right. Tough crowd. Tough crowd. Anyway, right. Thank you. Thank you. Um, and the question for me, thank you. This was a beautiful drawing, um, sand castle with stars on it. Um, if you were to add finesse to the top of your sand castle, would you use seashells, a flag, or something else?

Um, I definitely would use seashells because of the uniqueness of of their personalized imprint, which for me sets emotion um, government at at its best. It's not us all looking alike. It's our individual uniqueness that makes Virginia Beach Virginia Beach and the acceptance of our individual uniqueness.

That's what I would like to say. Thank you.

Okay, who's next? Jen.

Actually, this is very vulnerable. I feel exposed by these questions considering I'm from Virginia Beach. I don't like sand.

I like the ocean. I've never So vote like the one question was if a wave takes out your sand castle, what would you do? I would leave it and I would go to the boardwalk, but let me not think that way. Uh let's use this as a metaphor for Yeah. So this says uh I'll do this one.

What's your first step when you build a sand castle? So my first thought was gather sand. Um so just kind of start compiling sand to build. But then my follow-up thought was, well, maybe I should start with what idea do I want for the sand castle to then know how much sand to gather. So that's where my mind went. Uh, the first step initially was get all the sand you can get. But

then I stopped and thought, well, maybe first what do I want it to look like and then I'll know what sand to gather. So that's my answer.

Good. Who's next? Hutch.

I I first started to just not say anything and hopefully for time sake I could just be skipped and it would be okay. But um no, I've got a good question. Uh and I too like the drawing.

So thank you. Um some people think sand castles are just for kids. How can they be multigener? How can they be a multigenerational tool that brings people together? Um I like this a lot, this question. And um yeah, I get choked up uh sometimes when I feel like I shouldn't, but uh this room right now, I don't know if the public can see it, but really for us in

here, uh this means a lot to me. Um multigenerational, we have we have some younger folks, we have some older folks that have been here, but what I see right now is how I'd see a sand castle being built. I can't take the public safety out of me. It's in my DNA. um you know, you start with the outer rings and you come in and it gets more fortified and and it gets bigger and stronger and

then unfortunately we're either in the middle maybe we're in the middle of the coliseum. I'm not sure here, but I hope we're I hope we're in the middle of the of the strength of what we bring because all the way around us, you know, I don't know, there'sund 100 directors in here right now. Uh, and and assistant directors and stuff. So, to me, the multigenerational part is those everybody coming up through there. I

know we have to also talk about the generations that come behind us is what the multigenerational part but I think when they see our city um we bring it we bring it on every level uh every department in here has serious awards you know um and it's not it's not just fluff it's that they they are doing it every day and so to me that's I know sand I think of it and I look at the

picture and I think it's being washed away. Yeah. But ours I like to say has a little poured concrete in it. You know what I mean? and we're a little tougher than that. And uh we've proven it over the years from our from the shooting and from all the other things that we've been through and the the brushes with the hurricanes and everything else. We have a lot of stuff all the events we

put on. Anyway, I can go on and on. I'm I'm going too long, but uh thanks.

Appreciate it, Amelia.

Good morning to everyone and thank you all for being here and thank you too for facilitating us. Mine is similar to Councilman Hutch because it says some people think sand castles are just for kids. How can there be a multigenerational tool that brings people together?

One of the first things I thought about growing up, we were not allowed to get in the water. Some of you will may relate to that. And that's because of lot of recurrence across the West African uh coast. But as I traveled and got to watch and see young people, I realized one of the most important for me that relates to this is our parks, our recreation like the Gromic. This is where

both generations can come together to make a great difference for our city.

So, this is where I'm thinking and um sharing a time that I saw a sand castle takes me back to my granddaughter building one out near Grimick Park. And I said, "How are you fixing this?" She says, "Oh, it's important that I put a moat around it because this city, this castle has to be protected. So, you've got to look at safety." So, she got water and poured it all the way around

there. And then she put something on the top. She says, "This shows." And I said, "Well, what do you have on the top?" And she says, "Well, this is the cap. You know, Grammy, as you're there working with council and so forth, you people are sometimes up there on the top.

Somehow she saw us at But she was using those analogies over to that sand castle." And that inspired me because what we do here feeds back to that next generation. They're watching and they're interpreting it in their own way. Thank you.

Thank you, Michael.

Thank you, mayor, and and welcome. And I'm glad to be with all of you again this morning. My question was, do you prefer to build u a sand castle using a mold or build your own? And of course, for me, the answer is that I prefer to build my own. Uh because there's no way that you can um create something that's original and that will stand the test of time. And when you're building a sand

castle, I'm looking at the shore. You have to contemplate the uniqueness of where you're putting the sand castle.

And a mold could never allow you to achieve that. Um, you remember when you build a sand castle and the water comes up and kind of eats it away and uh the terrain is a little bit different. So, if you take the time to be strategic and be thoughtful and be deliberate, um, you can create a sand castle that's unique to where you placed it and will be more lasting, more robust, and also

more meaningful um, and more creative.

And so that's why I would prefer to build our own.

Thank you, Barbara.

Well, if if I were to add finesse to the top of your sand castle, would you use seashells, a flag, or something else?

Well, just in relation to this question being a question for this retreat, I would have to say I would add something else. I would add a cluster of people because this isn't my sand castle. Uh this is a sand castle. I'm I'm representing a lot of people and there has to be input from a lot of different people to make this sand castle the best. And so I see this importance of

being a representative and and knowing what others and having input from others is important so we know how to make this sand castle the special thing it needs to be. Hey, Rosemary.

Good morning everybody. It's nice to be together. Um hopefully we'll accomplish a lot today. Uh my question is what's important to teach a child when they first start building a sand castle.

I think it's really important to first get organized to assess the area. You know, you want to get too close to the water because you're going to get washed out pretty quick. um the quality of the sand and gather your tools, get all the tools that you're going to be needing and and think about exactly this what you would like to do. But just like a painter probably spends more time on prep work

than actual painting and do your prep work ahead of time and and be ready. And I and I think that's what this council does. We do a lot of prep work before we move forward on something and we're very thoughtful. We're we're very we we listen to the public and we try to make very sound decisions for everyone and I think the same thing is true with this.

Yeah. Thank you. And I'll tell you what, thank you. I think this is a very meaningful uh discussion and uh my question is what's the first step when you build a sand castle and I when we go during the Neptune uh festival time and we see the sand sculpture and we see that beautiful art created out of our sand and then once again yes sometimes the beautiful art gets washed away but what

does the city do? We replace the sand.

Okay. So, we always have it there. And you know, kind of like uh like what what Hutch and Barbara said, the first thing I think you got to do is have a vision and to build something that people want to see. When you look around this room, we have a council. We have all the management and staff behind us that make and you know their their vision of what

they want to see. But most of all, what Barbara said, what the public wants to see. So before you build the sand castle, know what people want to see that they can look at it and say, "Boy, that is reflective of my city." And everybody was included.

Thank you. Thank you all. Um, I hope then as you go through the next day and a half and continue to work for building the future of Virginia Beach, you keep in mind some of these sand castle lessons. You know, you talked about we need a vision. That's what you're doing today. You're setting the vision for the next two years so that the staff can plan and organize and prepare. Um, you

you've said that you want the uniqueness. You want it to be safe and resilient for multi- multiple generations to benefit from. You want to make sure you have the input from the people. You can replenish and come back when the waves crash upon you and you need to rebuild a little. And we're all in it together, smooth sailing for for the council as a team to plan forward.

So, just keep keep our sand castle metaphor in mind as we're going through the um the retreat.

With that, we're going to jump right into one of those big discussions about the ITA. Um and Deputy Manager Amanda Jarrett's going to come up.

And Mr. Mayor, members of council, um council's had a lot of lot of detailed and um like a lot of detailed robust conversation on the ITA and where we're going next with that. The goal of this presentation is not to go over all the information that was previously discussed and presented to council.

Really what Amanda is going to do is give you a quick succinct overview of the prevailing issues and really the decision points that we hope council would have a conversation on so you all can give us guidance as it relates to what do you all want us to do next as it relates to the ITA. So we'll be here to answer any questions that the council has. But when you see this presentation

it's not going to be a full robust 60 slide presentation like you've received previously. is probably going to be about 20 or so slides and really trying to get to the key decision points that we need council to have a deliberation on so that we can garner um next steps in terms of how to go with ITA.

Right. Good morning, Mayor Dyer, Vice Mayor Wilson, members of city council, manager Dhaney, um and the rest of the city team. As the manager stated, um this will be a very high level overview of um a presentation that Miss Warren gave to you back on July 8th. So this is not as robust, but is just meant to be um a starting point for your discussions that you'll have later today. So we'll

show you a few maps just to set the table about um the existing conditions and then we'll talk about the three proposals that have been briefed to you previously. the first being Lita, the second being the sports tourism plan, and the third a potential expansion of Innovation Park. And then following that, um Julie and her team will walk you through a discussion um hopefully to

provide direction to staff and should we proceed with portions of the sports tourism plan? Should the ITA plan be amended to allow for industrial expansion? And what steps um is the city council directing staff to move forward with? So again, here's a map just to show you the geography of the area that we're discussing. Um the ITA is the area between Oceanana and Ventress. Um this

area here, you can see the green line at the top, the blue line at the bottom, and then the yellow highlighted areas are city-owned property. Um in the current uh draft of the comprehensive plan, there's been two names that have been discussed for this area. One is the green line context area, the other is the courthouse context area. Um, and so those that name of this area is under

discussion by the planning commission.

Now, again, this is a larger map without the highlighted city-owned property that shows you the green line at the top, the blue line at the bottom. And it's important to note that utilities do not extend below the blue line.

So, first, um, the law enforcement training academy. I won't spend a ton of time on this, but again, is background and existing condition. It's currently located on Birdneck Road um in a former school facility that has uh is well past its useful life. And so council has been working with the team to identify future location for LITA. Um the council did give direction to staff on in March of

this year to pursue location of the Lita in the ITA.

Design funding um has already been approved by council is and is in the current budget.

Um so area six of the ITA master plan that exists today does identify that area at for municipal uses and so that has been the area that public works has focused on when they are looking to locate Lita in the ITA. The estimate of 82 plus million um does not include site development. It's only the construction of the facilities necessary for Alita.

The size of that site would be approximately 10 acres. So, sports tourism, um, you've received several briefings from parks and recreation related to a plan for sports tourism in the ITA. Your existing conditions, you can see listed here. There's a variety of sports um, and athletic complexes there today. You've got the Princess Anne Athletic Complex, the Virginia Beach Sportslex, field hockey

facilities, um, and the Virginia Beach Fieldhouse.

And so parks and wreck put together a sports tour tourism expansion proposal to be located in the ITA that would add baseball facilities, pickle ball facilities, cross-country trails, bike trails, a way to enjoy, um, both actively and passively the area in the ITA. The estimate for that buildout, um, as noted in the previous presentation, was 161 million, but I'll show you later how that's broken out. And there's

various phases that the council could choose from um if you wanted to implement some portions of the sports tourism plan. Um I will note that these costs do not include um roadway expansion costs of landstone road should that be necessary. So here's a breakout and again this is just very high level but when parks and rag put together their plan there were various areas. Um, there are some that are more

infrastructure heavy and I'm sorry the bottom of that's cut off. Um, but you should have a hard copy in your package.

And then there's some that are more passive um that could be implemented at a much lower cost.

And so then lastly for consideration um is an expansion of Innovation Park.

Here's the existing condition of that um business park. Now, as you'll note, we did announce several weeks ago the expansion of acoustical sheet metal, which leaves just over 10 acres of property remaining. Um, it was 150 acres of industrial zoning. Um, you've got acoustical sheet metal phases one and two. Phases three and four were just announced. Um, there's been over $22 million in infrastructure invested to

date. Um, AGI is in the process of constructing uh their facility within the park and there's just over 380 jobs there to date.

And so VBDA works with their engineer to put together two um potential expansion plans. It's a 25-year master plan that includes roadway extension, storm water facilities, and expansion of industrial property. Um one of their proposed plans was just to simply extend the Hudum Way culde-sac and expand the BMP that would add just under 30 acres of additional industrial property. And then there was

discovered. So, um, all three proposals can be accommodated, um, from a land perspective. Um, and so what we're asking for you all today is to give us direction on which of these would you like us to pursue. Um, council has previously given direction on the Lita.

Um, but we are looking for your discussion and direction related to implementation of sports tourism and any potential expansion of Innovation Park.

And so here's some thoughts for discussion um and direction that Julie again will expand on. But should staff um proceed with implementation of portions of the sports tourism plan?

Again, it was broken out um initially in four uh various phases or components that we could pick from. Um, should we conduct an economic impact study to truly look at the economic impact of sports tourism in Virginia Beach, which is know something that we invest in and previously had the Victus study done, which shows that sports tourism is an economic engine for Virginia Beach. Um,

funding was included in the FY26 budget to pursue some of these things. Um, and then it was directed to us to not proceed until we received further direction from you all. there was some preliminary funding included in the FY2526 budget. Um should we put together a funding plan for some of the less costly items to include the tree planting, the 5K route, the cross-country course,

things that would be um less impactful um and not require as much of an infrastructure investment.

um some version, it is important to note that some version of road improvements would have to be um put into place, but there would be more staff work that would need to be done, the extent and the cost of the road work that would have to be done. Um another question for consideration today is should the ITA plan be amended um to potentially accommodate some version of expansion of Innovation Park? um should we do an

economic impact study to show whether that um the value of the industry and the jobs and the wages that uh the potential announcements would create are truly impactful to the city of Virginia Beach economy. Um, and then if we were going to go that route, which what's the level of comfort with doing the smaller expansion, just extending the Cold Stack of Hudam Way or a more larger expansion

down into the ITA? Again, this would require um amendment of the ITA plan and then a resoning action from the body.

And at that point, I'm happy to answer any questions, but I will turn it over to Julia if there are none to walk you through the discussion.

Any questions?

Amanda, I have uh I have two quick questions. One is I heard you say something that I think we all should pay attention to here is is that I just want to make sure and reiterate it that you said that all three things are possible in this area, right?

So the area in total is 4,400 acres. Um staff worked with our public works department, GIS and planning to look at the various layouts. Now, it would cause some of the original locations from the sports tours and plan to shift, but they can all be accommodated. Um, what we would like to know is direction on which of or all would you like us to pursue?

But the good thing is is that what I'm trying to push home here is that it looks like we can have our cake and eat it too. It just might be a little different flavor than what we originally thought.

Yes, sir.

Okay. and that you worked with you you name you just named part of my second question was the departments that have looked at this that wasn't an all extensive list you just gave that was a partial no sir so we've all gotten together in a room to look at the various plans and to make sure that we were not operating in silos um because that wouldn't be beneficial to anyone um it just does

come down to a policy decision of what do we what does the council value and want to invest in um but we can make them all work and they're all valuable aspects to to the city.

Thank you. It was a good presentation.

Okay, Barbara.

Well, I have such a long history with this. I can't begin to tell you what I know. It goes back to this report, which is a policy report done in 2001 presenting the athletic village. This is where it all started. And this is before Brack. This was when we had first purchased the first property in this area, which was the Lakeidge property, and what we were going to do with it.

So, this athletic village concept goes back a long way. And I would be tickled to death to make copies of this for anybody who would read it because this has been our pol our plan for three decades. And we're only scratching the surface here. And I I just have to say that I think Uncle Sam did us the biggest favor we could have possibly had when they said that there could be no

residential in the ITA. Of course, they were do talking about the noise problem.

But one of the things that we have found out and this was before Matthew and before Dubberry was that this area is extremely poorly drained.

Historically, this was a series of swamps across there from Dismal Swamp to Holland Swamp. We still have the gum swamp in place there. This land is poorly drained soils, high water table, and the drainage issues are tremendous. So, that's the first thing we have to start with. If we had gone forward with that original plan to do residential in this area, Windsor Woods and Asheville Park would look like

a picnic. We would have an area that was full of flooded houses. So before we start planning what we're going to do in here, we better look at this issue of what the land is like and what is best for the land. And I hope all of you have read this. This area has been extensively studied. We had two very complete ITA plans done that looked at all of this before Matthew and told us

that this what this area was like and told us what the right thing is for this area and we're ignoring all of this and you know we can't just I don't think we can come in and just today say oh this is what we want to be. I think we need to look at what we know from all of the studies that we have done. And to think that we might think we've got to restudy

the whole thing. We know this area probably better than any area has been studied anywhere in the city. No, it's not right for residential for many reasons. Uncle Sam didn't take away this property from us. It was taken away with the soils types. And what we do with it is going to determine what it's going to cost us. To say five million or 20 million, that doesn't touch it. Because

to start with, and even if you look at the innovation plan the dump the VBDA came up with, the first thing you've got to do is dig 163 acres of storm water ponds, lakes, because of the poorly drained soil. and they have that right on their plan plus another 55 acres of wetlands that you couldn't couldn't begin to touch. So you've got a third of the property that you've got to set

aside to deal with the the type of soil that's there before you even start doing anything industrial.

If we could wrap up.

Okay. I know you don't want to begin to hear but you better look at all of this stuff before we make any decisions.

Thank you. Anybody else have a question?

Jen and then work. Yeah, I did actually hear from a resident about um light industrial use in the area and with our existing spaces for light industrial use, are they all utilized? So, in other words, are we expanding um or looking for more space for light industrial where we still have existing availability in current industrial areas?

Yes, ma'am. So, we're actively marketing the remaining space in Innovation Park as well as property that's held by um VBDA and corporate landing um and then again work with the broker community u the Hampton Roads Alliance and the state um to actively market the existing remaining industrial property. Yes, we are continuing down that path. We are unable to respond to they call them

RFIs, requests for information that come in when there's a project um considering the community in the region. So, some we're unable to respond to because of the property size or they don't match our strategic um our strategic target industries. Um but we are still marketing the properties that we do have available. Yes, ma'am.

Mrs. Rouse, just want to add extra clarity. Amanda, from my recollection, there's 51 acres available in corporate landing and correct 10 acres remaining in Innovation Park.

Okay. So, those are the um industrial or light industrial um properties that's in the city's hands currently like VBDA's hands. The there's others maybe sparsely that's like maybe in control of the private sector, but for the VBDA directly controls 51 and at Corporate Landing and 10 at Innovation Park. Is that accurate?

That's correct. And the 51 acres in corporate landing aren't contiguous.

They're spread across seven parcels.

Okay, we'll go Worth and Michael.

Thank you, Mayor. I do have a couple of questions just to clarify. So you said 4,400 acres in the ITA. How much is approximation is the uh parks and recck plan for sports tourism and how much for the expansion of innovation park and so therefore what would be left of the 4,400?

I I can provide you that detailed breakdown as a followup. I wouldn't want to misspe um but I can provide you that breakdown regarding the parks and rack plan and the expansion of Innovation Park. Yes, sir. But suffice it to say maybe half or a good chunk of the ITA would be untouched if we did both plans.

So there would still be remaining property in the area. It would be much less if you went with that larger VBDA plan, that 25 year plan. That would be um more consuming. So I would say it would move you into a majority of being um occupied. Um but you do have those choices.

Okay. And then just back to the question that councilwoman Rouse just said for the industrial market, there's a 7% vacancy today, this is what I do professionally. So of the land that's available the 51 acres in corporate landing that's really designated as an office park. I mean I don't believe there's any industrial. There might be an overhead door, but it's really no manufacturing is the covenants and

restrictions don't allow really overhead doors or materials. It's really an office park. So it's really limited to Innovation Park and Innovation Park there's two sites and one of those does not have infrastructure. So it's really one site and then maybe some small amount of land in the private sector. So it's very sparse if if that.

Yes sir. So corporate landing does have design guidelines that were imposed on the park which very much restrict the um type of use and um the activities that can be conducted in that park. it does lean more towards very light industrial and or office park. With regards to two of the parcels in an innovation park, um the costs to extend utilities to those parcels have been cost prohibitive to

several of the prospects that have looked at that park. Um those parcels it was over a million dollars um to extend water and sewer to that site. Um and so when looking at the required investment by the company in addition to site acquisition costs and then their development costs um it may it has made it difficult to market that site.

Okay, Michael and then Josh.

Thank you. I have a few questions um but some of them have been answered. I just want to u maybe just emphasize a little bit. So what I what I heard you say was that there are 51 acres remaining in corporate landing but not contiguous.

Correct. There it's spread across seven parcels. Yes sir.

And so there's limitations to what use could be placed in what area based on that limitation and based on that dispersion.

Yes sir.

Correct. Does that 51 acres include the um the site HRT has um contemplated for their use?

Yes sir.

It does. inclusive of that. Um, and there's 10 acres left at Innovation Park.

Yes, sir.

And are is are those 10 acres contiguous?

No, sir.

They're not contiguous. So what would happen to our economic development, not the authority, but to the department's operations if there were well given the limitations you have currently and if those limitations become further exacerbated by lack of open space for economic development use, what what position would that put the city of Virginia Beach in in terms of our economic development? velment initiatives.

So we have a strategic plan um that the economic development department has put together which identifies target industries and our key industry sectors in the city. Um dependent on the direct dependent upon the direction of city council, we would work to revise that plan. We would pivot um we would focus more on redevelopment um based on the property and the area available to us.

Um focus would shift to the SGA areas as is already a focus. Um, but we would reanalyze our target industry sectors and make sure that they were in alignment with what was available in the city and the direction of council.

Thank you. And uh, the ITA, just for clarification, I want to make sure I'm that we've drawn this out. What does ITA stand for?

The inter inner trans. I'm going to say it wrong. It's the inter facility traffic area. Yes, sir.

Inter facility traffic area. And what exactly does that mean in terms of the what what traffic which facilities?

So as I understand it um this was the area that was between Fenturus in Chesapeake and Oceanana in um the city of Virginia Beach and was identified as um areas that had significant flights um from the two military bases and have um two of the highest noise zones which um limit and restrict the types of development that we can have in that area. So, as was mentioned earlier, no residential um and so those would be

areas for um types of development that you're considering today.

Thank you. So, any type of development that would be contemplated in Well, let me go back. So, when the ITA was established, do you recall what year it was? It was in response to the B. So, it had to be post 2006.

Yes, I will follow up with that exact year, but I understand it was triggered by conversations related to B and the possible um loss of the investment at Oceanana.

That is correct.

So the intent So you you were you were on council then at the time, mayor. So the intent of um establishing the ITA was to preserve the operations and the presence of NAS Oceanana within the city of Virginia Beach. Was was it contemplated at the time and mayor I I welcome your your thoughts on this since you were here.

Was it contemplated at the time and and also vice mayor um that there would not be um a use of that property at the at the time or that the uses would be compatible with um an acceptable um design an acceptable use by the Navy as I understand it. I'm sorry.

Yeah. uh basically uh it was accepted nothing uh goes there without the okay for the Navy you know it has to be a compatible use and uh correct me if I'm wrong Amanda that a lot of the ITA was determined because uh flight operations where they use Fentress Field as a touchandgo landing area and uh uh and the truth be told from it's my understanding from reliable sources that the Navy is pursuing pilotless aircraft

and therefore if that evolution does occur and it is on the drawing board uh that touchandgo uh areas at Fentress would not be necessary anymore. Thank you. And I'm probably running up on my time. I don't know if the timer's I am to let time go.

I haven't been using the timer but yeah.

Well, I'll make it I'll wrap it up. But uh so the so the the intent was to ensure that the Navy's presence remained and um and that any use contemplated would be compatible with the Navy's operations but not that there would be no use or that that uh or that that property would be uh preserved in a way that there that it would be untouched.

Correct. And then an ITA master plan was done in 2017 um that would at that point outline suggested uses within that area.

Thank you. That's a perfect segue to my last and final question which is that there would be um there were municipal uses contemplated at that time. Can you recall what those municipal uses were or would you mind sharing that with us? So, I know that there's a chapter or an area outlined in the plan that goes into details related to those municipal uses.

And area six um was the area initially identified for those. Um I understand like municipal offices um training facilities would all be considered acceptable uses as I understand municipal offices, training facilities, and I believe a waste transfer station was contemplated at one time.

I believe there was a waste transfer station designated for that space. Mhm.

But we're not currently con we're not current we have no current plans for a waste transfer station although that was part of the adopted plan that was created in 2017. Correct.

Yes sir. So I believe it was included in the plan and I'm not aware of any active discussions related to a waste facility.

Thank you.

Yes sir.

Okay. We're going to go Josh and Stacy.

And mayor I just want to um remind everyone of our purpose for the discussion. We want to clarify any questions with Amanda. We also want to get to giving staff direction on next steps. It's not necessarily final decisions, but if we're pursuing a next step, what next steps are you comfortable with? So, that's where we're going to be getting to.

Okay, let's finish up with Josh and Stacy saying please.

Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, this is just questions for Amanda and then we can discuss later, right? Okay. Um uh the 163 acres that was mentioned on that slide, I think 16 it was. Um the storm water facilities out of how many acres total is that? So 163 of what?

So this is a breakdown that was provided from the VBDA engineer which was looking at a total area of just under 400 acres.

So as I understand it 400 acres. Okay.

And do those those those storm water facilities don't necessarily just include BMPPS. There are other things like underground storage or whatever.

Correct. And that would be dependent on what the ultimate use was in that area and how impervious the surface was. Um again this was all done at a very high level just to show what could work.

Sure. Um my last question is the um on page on slide 21 where you're talking about discussion and direction forward and um whether to whether we should conduct a economic impact study um and whether the ITA plan should be Can we save that for our final discussion?

Well, no. I'm just wondering does the ITA plan actually have to be can we can we do the economic impact study first before we decide whether or not to amend the plan?

Absolutely. That phase or order of next steps um is certainly council's direction to us.

Stay safe. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Um, as a result of the B hearings and actions that were taken, there were other areas that were affected where land use was restricted uh, besides the ITA. Uh, several neighborhoods and areas around Oceanana.

You have any idea how many acres were taken out of or were restricted as a result of that outside of the ITA?

I can follow up with you on that. Safe to say hundreds of acres.

Maybe thousands.

I would say several hundred. Approaching thousands. Yes, sir.

So, it's not just the ITA that was restricted. It's No, sir.

A lot of lot of area around the city.

Correct. To to prevent additional residential development and density in proximity to the base. Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Yes, sir.

Okay.

Do you have something?

So, um, thank you, Amanda. Um, we we want to start figuring out what kind of direction you want to give to staff and what's been presented as sports tourism as an option, innovation park expansion as an option. You already in March um gave staff direction to start pursuing Lita and then we've got space for other for whatever is on your mind. So, I'm just going to use this as a starting

point. with LITA back in March when you all um heard discussions about LITA next steps were that were already completed.

There were meetings with stakeholders, concept development, reviewing the concept with the city manager and then back in March it was reviewing the concept with council. Um so staff received the direction at that time to proceed to design concept revisions and then um at some point there would be construction funding um or there would be construction. You also in your budget this year created the major project

fund. So that was one of the projects that could be funded out of that but it's ultimately a council decision. So this is kind of the direction that staff is proceeding on based on the discussion in March.

So just to clarify with that in March council landed on LITA going into ITA council approved around $9 something million in the budget that you passed in July 1 for design services for the new Lita facility. We're starting the procurement process. A design form hasn't been selected yet. So it's not poured in concrete, but we're going on the trajectory on the path that you all set us on in March. So if we're to

diverge from that, we need to diverge from that pretty soon because we're with the intent of the design would be for the design of the ITA leader in the ITA facility.

Okay. So with sports tourism, some of the sort of high level next steps that uh uh deputy manager Jarrett just talked about in the last two pages of your presentation, um some of the potential next steps would be to conduct a feasibility and economic impact study. Um have it as a a budget discussion topic. Uh get public comment and feedback.

There are several small incremental steps toward implementation that are were listed. So you could look at starting some of those small steps and then um there's other CIP components related to road network to have a road so that um all the people coming in for the sports tourism events could do that.

So those are some of the next steps in innovation park expansion.

There's also a potential next step of conducting a feasibility and an economic impact study to see how that would um impact the city's revenues, amend the ITA master plan. There's also CIP related components. There's other potential steps here. So, where where I'm hoping to get you all um to give staff direction is eventually tell us how far in these steps and what other steps you would want to take to move

forward with any of these. Um, and so that's where I want you to have some discussion about what are the potential next steps. Ultimately, after your discussion, I'm going to have you come up and put some dots on how far you're comfortable. Should we be pursuing this?

And if so, I'm good to go this far. I'm good to go this far. And you'll be dotting some of these different items to talk about how far you're comfortable going.

Hey, Barbara, you had a question.

When are we going to have a public hearing so the public can comment on all of this?

um this this innovation plan thing came up as a surprise to everybody in my district anyway and that's the district it's in and there's been no no public hearing and the public has not had any input and I don't remember that we made firm that we wanted Lita in the ITA I would like a transcript of that discussion I think we were still considering the the the uh site on bird

neck and we said let's can look at both of them.

That was the lemonade of Mrs. Henley.

I guess I missed that day and I didn't realize I missed it. I'd like to have that transcript. But I think the people who live there have an opportunity to have some input. When can we have a public hearing especially on the innovation park expansion because that's had no public comment at all.

Okay. If I could just say this in in in time, you know, if we go with the direction of doing a feasibility study for the sports tourism and innovation park, I would assume uh the public hearing would be engaged at that point once we get all the definite information first.

It's not prudent to have a public hearing until we get the definite information about that. So, if we decide to go forward, be assured public uh input will be part of it. Okay. Go ahead and move on, Julie. Mr. Mayor, just to I want to um add to what you said, Mayor, if the council so sports tours, depending on if council wants to incorporate the innovation park into the ITA or an expansion of the innovation park

in ITA, that would need to shift the current ITA plan that you have, right?

If council authorizes that, there's already several built-in public comment, public briefing, ITA committee, planning commission briefings, and the public and the public comments and the public hearings associated with that. Then there's also the public hearing process that will come to city council after it finishes the ITA committee, the planning commission, and the city council

process. Then the public comment process when you guys take it up for vote. So really, if you all give us a direction to expand Innovation Park in the ITA, the process of amending the plan and then the reasonzoning on top of that as well is already going to bring in several points for public comment, discussion, and public hearings and deliberation and a public vote. So none of this can be done without significant

public feedback and definitely a public vote for to set the new policy if you all go in that direction. Okay, I'm going to go with Chen and then we're quickly and then we'll get to the exercise.

Well, this is part of it. Um, listening to everything and I have the comprehensive plan here, so flipping through as we're talking. Um, so I'm just thinking out loud. I'm wondering whether or not in terms of light industrial, if we're running out of space, has that type of economic development sort of met its natural end?

And by that I mean if there's opportunity for SGAA, so there's uh room for redevelopment, infill development, that's part of our existing comprehensive plan, is it time to pivot because we are running out of space for that kind of use. And I asked that question because I'm looking at um our existing comprehensive plan and in the courthouse planning area transition areas section there there is language

for um update the plan to ensure a balance between recreation, sports, tourism, existing business expansion, city facilities, agricultural growth in this area. But so much of it is about preserving space. So much of it is about preserving and uh improving um flooding resiliency. So my concern is in terms of next steps, how do we pursue development while also preserving um our or I guess

reducing sea level rise and flooding concerns and issues. Um and if we're thinking about um economic development, in what way does sports tourism meet the need of economic development? So does it have to be economic development in all these directions or if there's not an a natural fit for uh innovation park to be expanded in this area? Does that does that then mean that there is no economic

development if instead we emphasize sports tourism?

I think that'll be part of the discussions going forward. Okay, go ahead Julie.

Well, I so I want to make sure are there other potential next steps you all see that aren't up here? So, conducting a feasibility study, thinking about funding, having public comment. Are there some of those small steps um that you would want to start pursuing and road network want to start planning that? Are there other steps along sports tourism as potential next steps you would be ready to give some direction to?

Same same with Innovation Park. Are there steps that you're ready to give correction to? Are there things you have questions about something that's missing before I ask you to tell me whether or not you're good with moving forward with some of these steps? Is there an understanding that going forward that it would be a progression? In other words, one to one once once accomplished and

then an automatic progression going forward. But the journey of a,000 miles begins with the first step. And you know the the is that in that way we have actually facts to determine if we want to go on to the next step. But you know I think this is a logical sequence of uh you know what we can do to get to where we need to be. Uh you say

no the the one I personally am not sure is in the right order is these some of these small incremental steps um that were listed. I think some of those are small enough that you all might be comfortable pursuing some of them before doing some of these bigger studies that and I'm getting some nods. So that's one of course Thank you. Just a quick comment. We know we already have a lot of the studies

vict as as Mrs. Henley pointed at studies of the ITA previous and a lot of this costs money and time and at this point because this is very very high level I would rely on staff public works economic development the city manager uh public utilities to give us some highlevel costs that we can they guide us and so we don't get yet another study because it it does cost money and

it takes time. I think we can allow on staff's opinions and guidance. Patrick, so we have given you high level cost, right? So to do what we projected as part of the parks and w plan that council asked for in the 2425 reconciliation was um the lowhanging fruit, right? The cost to do some of the 5K um cross country trails and then the nature trails and some of the bike trails was around $1.5 to2 million in

fiscal year 2425.

Right. Um, we did give you a cost estimate for what it would do to economic impact study. Victa study did recommend that sports tourism, you know, is a is a significant opportunity for the city of Virginia Beach. It did suggest that we further study it to get a sense of in this area where would the tax revenues go, right? You know, because of where it's located, some of it significant portion will probably be

in Virginia Beach, but a good portion may go to Chesapeake. So that's why they asked us to evaluate it further. We have given you a general rough order of magnitude of $161 million. But the caveat we always said was not all of that cost has to be borne by the city of Virginia Beach. For example, what's going on now in the um the Princess Anthletic um area. Most of those things

are done by the private sector, right?

You know, the city may do the infrastructure work. We may do some of the courses and stuff like that but like ball fields and stuff like that a private operator may come and pay it pay for all of the field development or a portion of the field development right so that's the general exploration that we can go towards depending on where council wants to go you know so like we could move forward as Julie kind

of implemented with direction that to start to explore a feasibility study or to do some of the lowhanging small projects. And then that'll give staff direction to come up with a plan as part of the budget process to try to find $1.5 to $2 million to do some of the courses and the trails and stuff like that. while at the same time we do a feasibility study on how we could do the

whole thing, what the revenues would look like and is there any particular target markets we should go to like should it be BMX facilities, should it be ball field, should it be pickle ball or things like that.

Okay, Julie. Okay. So, what I'm going to ask you to do, and I want to make sure you feel like you have enough information to do it, is to take the the sheet of green dots you have in your I do want to say something though, just for the council's awareness on it, right? We could do those things, but just remember the other context of that as well is that if we're doing something

significant with sports tourism or doing something significant for Innovation Park, there's that CIP component associated with it, right? The the big CIP component is if you do the full 400 acres for um Innovation Park expansion, right?

That's we think that's probably 25 to30 million. there is a CIP component associated with the sports tourism because right now if you are bringing that many people in that's going to come for sports tourism our residents and then you know if we're bringing in tournaments and stuff like that there is some work that's going to have to happen with Lancetown that we'd have to plan out as part of the budget process as

well so we don't get away from that component right you know but we don't necessarily anticipate that's a decision that's going to be need to be made today obviously if we get the direction. We'll work on a plan as part of the budget process to present to you all all these things, you know, and then if if it doesn't make sense at that time, council could then give direction to do

something different based on your other budget priorities.

Rosemary, just wanted to say that um in relation to Innovation Park, just like you were saying there, the private sector may come in and pay for some of the things in the sports tourism, Innovation Park is also there's parcels that can be sold. So there'll be money coming in from that, but we could also create like we have the town center an SSD type of thing to help pay for the infrastructure

and the maintenance. So it's not all going to be on the cities if we decide to do something like that. But there's a lot of land there. It just seems like we're plotting not just the next 12 months, but really the next 25 years.

And we've got to think about you want to play, but you also have to work. and we're going to have to have a place to have jobs to come in. And right now, we're having hard time getting an economic development director because there's not a lot enough land for him to market him or her to market. So, this is a very futuristic discussion that we've got to have, but we've got to be thinking about not just

what we're doing today and uh what's going to happen the next 20 25 years.

Thank you. Well said. Okay. Yeah, Jen, just to clarify those um under sports tourism, it says consideration for small incremental steps towards. Is there an example of that or just we're considering what are the steps?

So, the small the small incremental steps would kind of be um the lowhanging fruit. Is somebody here from planning for parks and wreck and it it some of the examples are on slide 21?

So, Michael, can you come and explain to the city council the lowhanging fruit?

So remember when we presented this council asked for us to come back with lowhanging fruit, right? Part of lowhanging fruit was the feasibility study but then also courses and trails and cross country and that number for those things was about 1.5 to 2 million in fiscal year 2425. Right. So Michael, can you explain to the council again what's in that small incremental focusing on the trails and other things

that you and Chad put together?

Sure. So, what we looked at was some of the very large ticket items, the the the 125 baseball field complex that's going to be in the tens of millions. That's long-term partnerships in the future. But we looked at what could we do for lower cost immediate to make some improvements out there. One was a practice course at the existing pack going over the culverts.

uh the 5k course there. We had a three, five, 10k course that would be a couple million. Uh we had nature trails through the south. So all those things are one and a half, two and a half, three and a half, five mil or less. We looked at disc golf out at pack. These are smaller cost, smaller impact uh steps. And then we looked at an economic impact study for things like the baseball complex or

the big BMX facility, those other action sport amenities. We uh considered it off at the site.

Uh Mr. Kersman, I'm going to have you follow this up and and maybe Mr. Dhaney.

Um I have a question about the sports tourism because we've heard about the um soil quality, storm water. Um, for the purposes of that discussion, how does a like a when you talk about fields are are those um compatible with this?

It's this in other words, it it's the same sort of impact on as other types of development that you have impervious surfaces or manicured such that it still creates storm water challenges. In other words, how could that how do how do how are how is the storm water impact on some of those things different than other types of development?

I'll start.

Yeah, I'll start. Um, Council Member Beluchcci, it it's some of the impact, but depending on how you engineer and structure the fields, it'll be less of an impact and less costly than it would be for light industrial, right? because you're going to probably do if you're doing ball fields, you know, if you're doing grass, you know, you can you can accommodate some of that. And some of

these things are are built to allow for when they're flooding, they're flooding, you're not using it, then it goes down and recedes, but the trails and stuff like that are still maintained. So, it probably and and a lot of this is the reason why the current ITA plan is the way it's set up. It's take into account the poorly drained soils. is the reason why there's such a heavy emphasis on

active and passive recreation there, you know, and it's also the reason why the the light industrial buildout is so significant from a dollar standpoint because you need to accommodate for those um those drainage issues that's in the ITA. So it's probably a easier path to do trails and ball fields because you know it'll lead to less impervious than say if you were to what no one's asking

for no one's asking for this to industrialize the whole thing right Michael I don't know if there's any you want to add and I have a follow up but okay um let's talk about uh operational um because currently the um the ball fields that are there are managed by parks and wreck and are there travel teams using it and um how often do they use it and I know

you know off the top of your head I'm not asking for a specific report.

PAC is pretty much uses tourism pretty much every weekend during the peak season. I think we did one or two open weekends this entire year.

What's the peak season?

April through October, six months.

And um how is uh how is your staffing at those sites and others?

Fairly good. We struggle with part-time certainly um but full-time is good.

And Mr. Beliche, I'll add as well depending on the feasibility study. I don't think our model and Michael speak freely. I don't think if the council was to move towards exploring ball fields and things like that, our model wouldn't necessarily be to add more staff. Our model would be there are entities kind of like um the sports is operated and managed by a different group. The fieldhouse is operated and managed by a

different group. They're entities that are in this business similar to what we're doing at the sports center with um SFC that do this. Right? That's some of the things that we could explore as part of um the different studies is how best to go about this. We're not necessarily of the mindset that we would be asking for an expansion of the sports um facility group inside parks and recreation. They got enough work

maintaining the pack and keeping it at tournament level and doing the rest of the city's resources. The goal would be if council was interested in that to see if there's a private sector model that would be willing to come and take a lion share of the operations and also a significant share of the CIP buildout related with those things.

Okay, at this point I think we can get to the exercise. Okay, Julie.

All right, so you all have a sheet of dots in front of you. I'm going to ask you to come up and place your dots first. Should we pursue?

Put a dot here. If you think we should pursue continuing to think about it, you're not committing to building it out. You're not committing exactly, but just generally, is this something we should pursue? And then a dot on the different big post-its here. um and they're roughly in order like and so if you want to pursue everything for sports tourism I want to do some small steps things like the trees or a practice

course or trails you would put a dot here I also want to conduct a feasibility study you put a dot here I want to um at the CIP retreat discuss funding you'd put a dot here I want public comment and I want to think about road networks you would put a dot on all of it. If you want to just stop here, I want to think about some small things

and I'm not ready to make a decision about anything else. You just put one dot. Does that make sense? So, on all of these on your big postits, put dots. I added a couple from where you were talking um in the innovation park seeking private partner funding. So, actively pursuing private partner funding there. I guess that probably applies to everything. So, I'm gonna put it here. You could seek funding for

tourism, for innovation, park. Um, having a public hearing while it's embedded in a lot of these as a first step. Um, and then throughout I think I think I'd see 11 dots, but ensuring flood protection in whatever you do. So you're gonna come up dot here and on as many of these as you want. Any questions?

How are we gonna do this?

No, just you you all can.

Yeah, just, you know, go ahead. Let's get started.

That's okay.

Stacy and Jen, why don't you go ahead and get the thing started?

What if we run out of dots?

I don't think you will, unless you're cheating.

Yeah. On the postits. On the big postits.

I can do your thoughts.

That's right.

America.

Yes.

I don't want

What?

at some point.

That's why I was asking We'll get it done.

I was going to do it.

Okay.

Yeah. Yeah.

I know.

Dedication will do whatever you want.

We're going to and close next Tuesday.

Okay.

I need three people to get on the agenda too.

I think everyone has placed their dots.

Okay. We'll talk about it later, but we're going to talk.

I told you to do a draft first $10,000.

Remember that?

Yeah.

So, I'm going to um quickly recap tell you tell you where your dots are to give staff direction. See if there's any final questions or comments about this and then we'll take a break.

Okay.

Um so there's a couple extra dots here.

There's 11 of you. Um so I'm just going to say someone slipped. Um but everyone is interested.

Who did the extra dot?

Um uh everyone is interested in pursuing sports tourism in the ITA.

Um within that there's interest in the incremental steps as well. That also got an extra vote but everyone is interested in some of the small extra uh small incremental steps in the ITA. So that would be giving direction to staff to come back to share what some of these small steps could be. Um then for a feasibility uh feasibility and economic impact study for sports tourism. We've got seven dots

here. So the majority of you are ready to consider this but not uh unanimous there.

Sorry.

Yeah. Michael, I'm sorry for interrupting, but I have to say this. If there's 14 dots and there's 11 of us, how can we rely that any of this distribution is representative of the will of the body?

Okay. Yeah, let let's just, you know, I hear you, but this is major direction, mayor.

No, I understand that. But, uh, so we're making we're providing direction based on a distribution of dots that no one really understands how they were placed. Let's just say, Michael, it was just in one area because I was standing there watching people put the dots on and uh you know, let me put it this way. A few just popped up in in that one area. So, yeah, we got to we got to find a direction.

Mayor, I I respect your point of view and I and I respect that we have to find a direction. I have I just want to register my concern with that methodology.

Yeah, I share it, Michael. and and I will um generously interpret this as the direction that that you're giving. This isn't a formal vote, but it's giving staff general direction about what um what you want to pursue, what you want them to be preparing for you. So, with the recap, if anything is coming out like, holy cow, um only one person voted, but there's seven dots up there.

We need to hear it.

Um so lot of interest in small incremental um steps uh some interest in a feasibility or economic impact study about sports tourism. Uh eight dots here on discussing at the the next budget retreat how we would fund some of the sports tourism. So trying to think about a plan for it. um uh three five dots for public comment and uh seven dots for CIP related components for the no road network.

If I were sitting right here, my interpretation is the council wants us to continue to pursue uh sports tourism as a use of the ITA and take some small steps and start planning.

I would also clarify to the council that all of these things still have to come back to you all for voting consideration some way shape or form because we don't have any money to do any consideration of the small incremental steps to you know for the cross country the practice course the nature trails we have to come back to you all for that as it relates to the road networks and stuff like that we

would still have to come back to you all and that'll probably be a part of the budget retreat where we can have that conversation We do have funding for the feasibility study. What I would suggest with that is that we would work on a scope and we would share that scope with city council to kind of make sure we're hitting all the areas that you want us to do further

study on and then you would give us authorization to proceed with an RFP to get a firm or we can use Victus who we currently have under contract or a firm like that. Right. So you're not tell nothing that you're telling us right now is poured in concrete. Right. But we're just getting a general sense that there is generally overwhelmingly majority agreement that we further explore this

sports tourism concept in the ITA.

Okay.

Okay. And let me just, you know, appreciating Mr. Belaluchcci's concern, does anybody disagree with the outcome of this particular one? And then I'll ask the same question for each one. Does anybody disagree with the results of this? Okay.

All right. So then innovation park expansion um has eight dots on yes we should pursue. So this was looks unanimous.

This is a majority but not unanimous. Um three dots on conducting a feasibility or economic impact study for the expansion. Um six dots for amending the master plan with public comment and considering resoning. and five dots for discussing the CIP related components on the road network. So again, my interpretation is a majority is interested and still continuing to talk about this, but we're a little slower in

what we want to do than sports tourism.

Is that how you with this one? I'm not sure how to proceed, council. So you got well it sounds like there's a majority of you all that want to pursue this and it seems like what at least indicated here at least six dots are there for amendment to the ITA and master plan um not enough to to consider this as part of the budget retreat you know but is generally Mr. Mayor, if I would ask the

council, what are is there a general sense that you all want to explore this?

And to me, if you're saying you want to explore this, it would be starting the process of amending the ITA plan.

Rosemary, how many dots were on the U the ITA plan?

The budget budget CIP.

The budget CIP is five.

Five.

Okay. I didn't put one there. I get tired of standing and so many people with my leg. So, I did a very abbreviated version. So, I would put a dot there if you would accept it.

Okay. Josh.

Um, Mr. Mayor, and I don't want to speak on behalf of anybody, but like kind of as I'm looking at this, what what what this is saying to me is that it looks like we're interested in at least exploring everything a little bit because what you know what we don't know is what the estimated cost like the true drill down estimated cost infrastructure. We don't know. I mean, we know sports tourism investment is

going to involve, like you said, roads and buildings and bathrooms and parking lots and and things and and even turf fields or impervious surface. So, so that that that's going to require some analysis. We don't know if there's public priv or private private partners.

Um, we don't know what kind of uses might draw. We don't know where the hotel stays are going to be. I mean, same thing with Innovation Park. We don't know what the uses are, but we don't know. I mean, there's just tons there's so much we don't know that I think it's worth running down as much as we can so that we can make a so that we

can it's tough to put a dot way far down line when we're not even anywhere close to it quite yet.

So, Mr. Mayor, I think that the clarity I'm trying to get from the council is and Mr. Um, Council Member Show, I do think you're on to something, but the clarity I want to get from you all is just the understanding that if we trigger this, that's a that's a we're triggering a a process that's going to hit planning commission that's going to come to you that's going to get a good

amount of public feedback, right? And I got no problem doing it, you know, but just want to make sure that you all are aware if if we go with this and say we start amending the ITA plan, we're literally going to be taking steps to get economic development, um, public works, parks and wreck to work on what we've been talking about here and bringing something to your appointed bodies and then ultimately to you all,

you know, sometime in the next 6 months.

because I think it'll be about maybe about a four to six month process to go through all the different public um processes.

Uh you know let me say this first of all does everybody concur with the uh notion of at least moving forward.

Okay. So, we can all agree with that. U and then but once again, um Patrick, you know, I think we have a lot of information on hand uh that you've already done. So you know conducting a maybe in kind a formal feasibility study. I think we have enough information that if you can compile it uh you know going forward um so and that would facilitate amending the master plan uh part of it. So I

would say by all means you know once again I think whe whether it be the sports tourism or the innovation park put together the coherent details of what you've already have been doing over the you know the you know past years uh so we can start getting to a decision point. Does that make sense? Barbara, the innovation park.

Um, when we were talking about corporate landing, it was mentioned that they have some very specific design guidelines and so forth. Well, so does Innovation Park.

Remember this started out to be the biomemed park and that's when it got the I1 reszoning when we changed because it didn't work with biomed and all we did was said we can start looking at things beyond the medical because that didn't work. We have extensive design guidelines for this park as well, plus the promises that we made to the neighbors in that area. And that's why I'm so concerned about us getting this

far without even letting any comment come in from those neighbors because of what we promised when we allowed this to be quote the innovation park. There's a great background to this that I feel very responsible for as a as a district representative because I told the folks we're going to keep the design guidelines. It's going to be a lot like what we had planned with the biomed park which was to be a

research park. It was to be campusoriented and what we're getting out there now is far from that. And I I'm just that's my concern. And so when we talk about Innovation Park, please go back to the very beginning of the day when that property was reszoned and given to the development authority. It was to be something entirely different.

But be assured, as uh the city manager indicated, there will be significant public hearings on this once we get a concept and plan to talk about. Worth.

Thank you, Mayor D. I just want to follow up because a little bit of history here again as you know I've been in the business Oceanana West Corporate Park perhaps one of the best corporate parks in the whole region home to steals North American headquarters IMS gear advanced manufacturing but four and five story class A office building. So originally Ocean West Corporate Park which is Linhaven Parkway including the

mall from Interstate 264 beautiful area lots of great jobs. Originally that was intended to be an industrial park. Then it morphed into an office park in the 80s and 90s as the office market developed and again a beautiful class A office buildings a great um office and of course retail corridor as well with Lin Haven Mall. So Ocean West corporate park originally was initially a an industrial park that morphed into a

commerce park of both office industrial and retail.

Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Okay Josh. Thank you, mayor. Um, you know, just one thing as we're kind of evaluating this. I mean, a while back, um, you know, I had asked because I was wondering what our investment in sports tourism had been.

Um, and, um, I know because I know recently, last year, we did 19.5 million. Um, and that was it was Yeah, it was 24 24 was when it when it was invested and and it was um, the HRSC got 10 million. um sports plex got a little over four million sports plex and field hockey and then the princess uh uh athletic complex got 3.26 million. So you know and I we hear from a lot of people

around the city and and sports tourism advocates who you know who are obviously supportive of our sports tourism investments and out of that 19.5 million 17.4 $4 million of that went to sports uses in the Princess Anne Commons area.

So, um, so then I asked another question about, okay, well, what's been our total investment in sports tourism? Um, and inclusive of that 19.5 million, the total investment has been 69.5 million.

Um, but what's not included in that is the sports center. Um, because the sports center is altogether different.

Um and uh because we had that kind of unique situation, the operator and and all of that. Um so the next question I asked was what revenue it had generated.

Um and it's uh just real estate taxes and people and meals taxes. This is just straight tax revenue. It's no indirect.

It's no induced. It's no hotel nights.

It's, you know, I mean, so it's it was just really just tried to scrub just for the tax revenue. um $315,000, a little north of that a year revenue one year for just under, let's just call it a $50 million investment plus the sports center because the $20 million we just spent hasn't come into fruition. Um and I'll finish in just a sec. Um on the flip side of that, I wanted to know how

much we invested in Innovation Park and what the return has been. Um and it's to date 22.4 4 roughly million dollars invested in Innovation Park. Um but just for that $22.4 million, we get over a half a million dollars of real estate taxes for that. So for a third of the investment, we're making almost twice the return. Um and then not to mention the fact that we the VBDA owns owns property and has sold property. So

there's revenue from those transactions um which could total as much as $17 million. So, I'm I'm I think we should do a little bit of all of it, but I think those are really important things to keep in mind as we, you know, evaluate um and we've talked about return and economic impact and feasibility.

Okay. At this point, Patrick, do you have a direction that you can live with?

Yes, Mr. Mayor. It's the I'm getting a general sense that we'll pursue all of it, right? You know, basically what we're going to be working on right now is getting a general sense of what a feasibility study will look like. As part of the budget process, we'll contemplate small incremental steps like planting trees, the cross country trails, practice courses, nature trails, and then talk to you more as the budget

process on the rest of it. Similarly for the innovation park, not hearing really a desire for economic impact study, but we'll pursue the process of thinking about what it would look like to amend the ITA plan and all the public processes associated with that and then consider that as part of the CIP process as well.

Okay.

And then just I I'm don't know if we need to recap. Lita is continuing. From from what I've got from council, we're keeping in line with the March 11 direction is we'll continue to process as if lead is going into ITA and again going through the design process going through to secure the design firm.

Nothing's poured in concrete yet, but once we secure that firm, we'll let you know and then we'll be moving forward with design. And as um LJ communicated to you when he briefed you in March, we will come back to council similar to what you all did with the RLoop project to update you all on design and get further feedback and let you know how the project is pres progressing.

And then finally, I'd say these bottom three in pink are sort of principles the staff will keep in mind. We want public input um ensuring flood protection all the time and continue to seek uh private partner funding.

Okay, great.

So, with that, thank you for the direction. Um, we're ready for a break.

It is 10 minutes.

I was going to give you 15.

15. Okay. She's the boss.

Okay. Let's take a 15minute break. Great conversation, folks. Thank you all.

10:35.

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baby.

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back up.

Um, you got some nice artwork.

We do. We've got um we've got I didn't do this, I'll just say. Uh, we've got an a good artist. We spent a lot of time with your staff thinking about what you've accomplished and how we could represent that to you. Um, so we're shifting now away from the ITA. We're now in the looking looking a little back looking at what's around us. What's our environment in Virginia Beach right now

that can help set the stage for you setting your priority for the next two years? You are out talking to your constituents all the time. you're hearing what staff brings to you all the time. You know, what's important to you, but we also want to make sure you're hearing some of the other context of um of the city to remind yourselves of the big picture, that citywide focus before we shift into setting um setting your

priorities for the next 24 months. So, we're going to start by looking back.

Um, and we've got I'm going to walk you through what I'll say is a beautiful graphic of your accomplishments in the last um 24 months. In your packet, you also have uh this FY2425 closeout report of accomplishments. So, this has a little more this has more detail definitely than what's up here.

There are also some things that are highlighted on here that are not um not here. We we got information about accomplishments when we spoke to all of you prior to the retreat, what you were proud of in the next 24 months. We also talked to the department directors about some of the successes that they've had in the last 24 months.

So, I'm going to start um by walking you through two years ago. You set your um intentions for what um what you wanted to focus on for 24 months. You then were delivered a report of your focused action plan with govern and vision and invigorate as your priorities. Sticking with our sand castle theme, we're building a lot of sand castles, but there's also a lot of blank sand out there, too. So, not everything is done.

there's a lot more building to be done.

Um, and there might be things that you hear that you want to put some caveats or amplify as we go through it. So, I'll start in the govern section. So, govern is the heart. That's the planning and um starting of setting the vision and framework for how you operate the city.

some of the accomplishments that you've had in the past two years. You've done a lot of enhanced civic engagement and transparency. So, you've had different public engagements and forums where you've brought more people from the community in to inform you before you're making decisions. The staff has been doing more of that as well.

Um you've I think all of you mentioned to me that you're proud of the investments that you've made in your employees. Some of that is reflected in pay increases, other working conditions, but um a big accomplishment. You know that your employees are at the heart of everything you do and you need a good employee base to deliver well to your community. And so you as a council have invested in your employees.

Um, you've got strong financial management at the base of what you're doing. You've got your AAA bond rating.

You've made other decisions like creating the major projects fund. Um, so you're making decisions to have that strong financial base for the future of your community. You've been modernizing city facilities and fleet. Got um city hall here. you've been making improvements to the campus and around town and so the fleet to um to provide the basis for the services that your employees provide and that you provide

out to this um constituents.

You've made different improvements around technology. We've just highlighted one cyber security enhancements. That's a very behind the scenes thing that um you don't pay attention you might not pay attention to until you need to pay attention. So staff has been working and you've allocated funding to be able to invest in cyber security to make sure that um your data and your systems are safe.

Um you adopted the 24-month focus action plan. I um so council has been having a lot more consensus in the last year providing staff clear direction. So doing things like adopting the focus action plan and working well together um has been helpful for staff to be able to know what direction to march in to execute on your vision.

And finally, in the center here, you've maintained the lowest tax rate in Hampton Roads. And you all are very aware when when I've been talking to you and I'm sure as you talk to others that you need to have that balance between having enough funding to provide this uh services that a world-class city provides and making sure that the tax rate is affordable for your residents and you're not pricing people out.

So this is some of the highlights of what you've accomplished in the past two years in the govern category. So after we govern, we set the groundwork, we start envisioning, we're planning the community future. Um you have done a lot of work on the 2040 comprehensive plan.

It's not complete yet. The draft is underway, but you've made a lot of progress. And um so many of your decisions are about land use and how you're going to be using your land.

That's the heart of planning for the community's future.

Tied to that, the staff has developed a land use community engagement toolkit. I think it might not have been rolled out to council yet, but it's almost ready to be rolled out to council, but it's um it's tying back to your desire for more um civic engagement and transparency.

It's helping uh developers understand how they can engage with the community as they're going through the planning process so that the community is involved earlier on.

Um there's in addition to the comprehensive plan, you've been developing and updating other plans. The uh transportation master plan was updated and you've made a lot of progress on long planned road improvements. says Linhaven Parkway on this street sign. You had a ribbon cutting I think recently. So there's a lot of projects that take a lot of time to plan and it takes time for you to see

the results, but you all are laying the groundwork and seeing the results.

Um you've had continued continued implementation of the flood protection program and storm water master plans.

So, um, the bond referendum where you received funding, you're making progress on that. You know, you face challenges with the amount of funding and changing costs, but you're continuing to pursue that. Um, so that flood protection is important throughout the city and making progress there.

Affordable housing, um, and has been important to all of you. was one of your primary uh priorities two years ago.

You've completed the housing study and you adopted the attainable workforce housing performance grant. So, you're making progress in this area as well.

Um staff has completed the inventory of city-owned parcels. That's something that you ask them to do to have a better understanding of what the city has control over as you're planning for the future.

There's been customer service enhancements throughout a lot of uh city departments um with I'll just I'll just leave it at that because I I'll get lost in the details, but staff focuses on customer service improvements to make the um government easier for residents to access.

um continuing to work on environmental issu uh initiatives related to recycling and wind and solar um as well as uh efforts within city departments to uh promote resiliency and sustainability there.

Uh you've had some major employer announcements as well as some retention of small businesses. Uh we've got a little Amazon logo. This is your sheet met metal logo. Those are two that folks mentioned a lot when we were on the phone with you all. Um so bringing in new businesses to help bolster the tax base for the community.

Um over 1,00 11,000 acres are um in the ARP now. And so while you're growing, you're also preserving your agriculture area.

And then the um SWAM small woman and minority business um program exceeded the C council aspirational goals in FY23 and 24. So trying to support all businesses.

So after we envision we invigorate we govern we envision we invigorate some of your accomplishments there. There's been a number of initiatives to expand access to health and human service human services and more are coming to be more accessible in the community.

Um there's been uh proactive youth and school support from the council. Uh many of you mentioned schools in particular when you were talking about things that you're proud of that while you are not the school board, you are proud that you're continuing to support the schools and recognize the schools are um important part of the community.

You've made some big decisions about Rudy Loop Park, the design and public engagement and um moving forward with Rudy Loop Park. I think a decision was last week as well. So, um continuing to move forward.

Uh you have received several safe city rankings um from different rating groups across the country and continue to be on many of those lists.

You have created sustainable arts and culture funding and programming with um decisions made last year. This is the um a drawing of the lily and I wrote it down somewhere seaggrass and lily um sculpture that recently got unveiled by um sustainable arts and culture funding and program.

There's been a lot of investment in a variety of parks and recreation and trails including moving forward on the VB trail.

You've expanded library programming, so more access to libraries for the community.

Continued emergency prep preparedness focus. So the focus on public safety continues. And finally, the opening of the dome really trying to um make Virginia Beach a yearround destination.

Um and so that's one of the efforts there. So, when I look at this, I see a lot of progress. I see you've been building a lot of sand castles and have a lot to be proud of. I'd ask you all just quickly, does something seem missing that you think is um really important to call out that you've accomplished in the last two years? Any questions about any of these things? And

again, there's a handout in your packet with more information.

Okay. comments or questions?

Yeah, you know, Josh, um, thank you very much for doing this and the artwork is awesome. Is it one of your staff?

Yeah, really nicely done. Um, just two things I saw and it's probably the first one is probably under emergency preparedness, but um, compassionate billing I think was huge and I see Chief Straoud I think back there somewhere.

So, um, and just just overall support for our public safety um, personnel. Um, and then the other one I saw, and this is maybe a little bit nearer to ground, but not really. Um, the major road projects finally out the door. So, like Alaskan Road, we got Shore Drive phase three starting. Um, Elbow Road is underway. Um, and these grant tied projects that free up, you know, opportunities to seek other grant money later.

Hey, anyone else?

Yes.

Yeah. Amelia, thank you again for sharing that. Um what was important along with this was that attainable housing.

We're already seeing the fruit of that to hear the neighborhood uh especially for district 4 yesterday knowing there's this performance and their new um development that's coming up 180 attainable housing. All of those have made a difference. The other part that I noticed was important was um to do with the civic engagement and community. So they feel they are included and also that same day access because

mental health is on the rise but we are addressing that. So thank you.

Thank you Worth.

Thank you Mayor Dy. Thank you Julie for this u summation. You know the city is really as well as almost our staff. So thank you. Just two additions. Uh this council did um increase funding to the arts from the tip fund from the admissions tax 10% of that. I think that's a big step for the city. Also, this sounds dull, but is needed parking both at the oceanfront and at town center. We approved some initiatives for

park additional parking at in both places and a central beach master use plant next to the convention center.

Thank you.

Great, Michael.

Well, I appreciate council member Remick u bringing up the arts funding because I think that is transformational historic and that direction was set at a previous retreat two two years ago two years ago and and so um it's historic and and meaningful and we we're already seeing many positive impacts come out of that. So, thank you for for raising that and elevating it. Um, we also just received a report that I just

want to talk about um or an update from our parks and recck department that 1.6 million people visited Mount Trashmore just within the last year. Um, making it the most popular public space outside of the beach by far um where recreation, exercise, community um and many other things all come together. And I just want to just emphasize as we con as we're talking about developing new

public spaces and new amenities um how important it is to celebrate the ones that we have that people really love that fit just like an old shoe um and also make sure we take care of those.

You know, thank you. Just uh following up on what Michael said, I think it's very important that when we have these retreats, we see that positive action come as a result of it. And I think Michael, you brought that up. And uh the other thing that is, you know, really uh you know, very citizen focused are the commitment to trails. Uh earlier Stacy asked about, you know, some of the other

land outside of the ITA uh that was part of the Brack right off Nork Avenue uh and back a little bit in a private neighborhood. There was we had to buy some land there and there's a fivemile trail right smack in the middle of a neighborhood and a lot of people don't know about it, but it's there. And I think a lot of the things the accomplishments are things that people may not see or observe. Uh

but definitely, you know, the revitalization of what's going on in Mount Trashmore. And uh you know, I think the other thing is the, you know, the satisfaction survey, you know, that was done. Hey, we're not a perfect city, but we're darn good city. And I think that reflects in some of the accolades I get. But the thing is I can tell you that uh the higherups in the Navy are very very satisfied with the

relationship that we have going on. We meet quarterly with uh Little Creek and Oceanana and uh and you know we are kind of the template after we got put on the brackent master jet base. And this is what they use and you know since we uh had the wakeup call with the B uh we have it inre achieve some incredible results.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah Rosemary.

There have been a lot of great things said here and I just wanted to add a little bit to it. Um especially with Aaron just coming last week and the tide gates at uh Windsor Woods and all of those things, the things that we've been putting in for the flood protection pro project, they're really starting to work now and that program is moving forward and it was supposed to be 567 million

and now is at 1.3 billion. But with that and also with the rising cost and inflation, um we're still moving forward on things. We're we're finding ways to get there with with extra grant money and that sort of thing. Um we've got some major road projects. Winston Salem is well underway uh to be finished next year and 17th Street's going to start in October.

Uh VB Trail is I think it's a dream come true for for a lot of folks. And uh Indian River Road things are going to start happening on Indian River Road.

So, there's a lot of good things that we're able to push through in spite of the inflationary projects. Oh, and Elbow Road, that's another big one. So, we're we're moving forward and we're doing the best that we can with the resources that we have.

And and Vice Mayor, you're moving forward even though things take a really long time. And so sometimes people in the community don't see the progress that you're making on these road projects, for example, because it takes so long to go through the process, but even in a two-year time period, you can see that you're making progress.

And Patrick, don't we have Centerville 3 pretty much on Q?

Yes, Mr. Mayor, that one is pretty much on Q. LJ, what's the timeline for construction on that one?

believe we're going we're going to bid by the end of the year.

Okay.

You caught me flatfooted on the side of your face.

I believe night night at the improv.

I believe we're going to bid before the end of the year on that one, sir.

Okay.

You know, that's another one long awaited, but we're getting there.

Amelia.

Yes. Um the Cleveland Street that is something we've been waiting and that's you know now on board for moving forward.

So that's important and also in the um penrook to do with parking there. So these are opportunities now for people to be able moving across and the last thing about the microtransit that is important is working well for our city because mobility matters. Thank you. Thank you.

And then just just another reminder that we have as a city been very proactive.

You know, homelessness is, you know, affects every locality going. But I think we should all be proud of that we are proactive. Now, once again, is there work to do? You better believe it. We're not there yet. But I'll tell you what, we uh you know, we are recognized in one of our accolades of being the most caring city in the nation. And I think a lot of it has to do not only with our

nonprofits, but our significant outreach, you know, to address the homeless situation and treat people with compassion and empathy. And I think that really helps define Virginia Beach.

Barbara, just in in looking at the um resident survey though, I know that we talk about the fact that we include the public, but this is one of the lowest points of the satisfaction rating. We only get 30.8% of people uh feel that that they have an opportunity to participate in city development and and city uh decision making. So we might think we're giving people the opportunity but they don't

feel that. So how do we make the difference?

Yeah, you you can make all sorts of efforts but if they don't participate in them, they're not going to feel that they're involved.

So um you mentioned the resident survey.

We're gonna ask um first deputy manager Kroski to do a super quick recap of the demographic presentation you heard about a week ago and then we're going to ask Dr. Espirus to do a quick recap of the resident survey just so it's fresh in your minds as we start thinking forward.

Okay, thank you for that. It'll be super quick, but before I do that, I'm going to go off script just a little bit. Um, it's great that we're talking about the com accomplishments from the last 24 months and and the focus action plan and I think because we've had new council members on staff before we did an initial um presentation about how that's not just by h happen stance. I think

it's important that you all know that the time you spend in this retreat really matters. Uh the focus action plan has tons of infrastructure behind it uh to make sure that we progress it. uh the city manager really commits to it. Um we have quarterly meetings that Dr. Esparis and his staff lead. So the initiatives that you all create that come from this every quarter they're reporting to OPA

then MLT which is my colleagues uh deputy city manager, chief of staff, the manager and I meet with folks and we talk about progress. Uh departments, every single department has a departmental performance plan and they have initiatives. Um, council member Hutchinson will remember what it's like to be on the other side. Uh, they have to report on that. They meet with the city manager and the deputy city

manager. So, I just want you to know that the focus action plan does not sit on a shelf. We put a lot of intentionality behind operationalizing that um to make sure that we make good and on your progress on things that matter to you. Um, so I just felt like that needed to be stated. There's a lot of infrastructure behind making sure we operationalize our plan. Okay. So, the reason why Julie gave me the mic, it's

gonna be super quick because I still feel like I'm floating in the clouds at last week presentation. Michael did such an amazing job on um just providing you with some statistics about our our community. And essentially, he talked about population. It's like an intersection or interdependencies between population, housing, economic development, um and affordability. And what was

really interesting that he talked about was that uh population for us as well as the schools is largely flat. Uh the real takeaway is the composition of that of those populations. For us as a larger city, uh the composition is that we're getting older. Um and migration will play a big role in how we address that.

And what he talked about is that migration is largely influenced by housing. Um, I think we hear a lot about our slow growth, but what was interesting from his data was that it's most cities in our state over 250,000 population are seeing slow to no growth.

Folks are moving to more rural areas.

And his uh hypothesis was that it's because housing is affordable. Um, so how do you recruit jobs? How do you get people to migrate here? How do you retain younger folks uh if they can't afford the housing? Um, so that's one of the things that he talked about.

um education the population of schools was interesting because again their population is the same but when you look at the type of students or the students needs that's what's interesting um whether it's students who are in their gifted learning program or students who have English as a second learn uh syn second language or folks with uh students with disabilities they're seeing um students that have higher

needs even though their population is pretty much staying the So those were some of the takeaways for me.

I also want us to think about number five about how these demographics and trends impact the services we provide.

Um some of the things that we are seeing in some of our department budgets for public safety for instance and alen is like our aging in place. Um, I know at one of the mayor's hope initiative meetings last year, uh, one of the nonprofits uses our libraries to help with like memory games and creating community for our seniors. Um, so there's some discussion about how can we support our aging population? What does

it look like uh to be a community that embraces that? Um, so just want to keep these things in mind. Slow to no growth, but that's not unique. We're seeing that with other larger cities driven by affordability.

Um, how do we get people to move here?

Attainable housing is likely one of those things. And then how does that impact our services? So, super high level. We did these really cool booklets for you where you have a lot of his graphs and oh, you all did so great.

Thank you for uh bringing them. You get a gold star, Council Member Hutchinson.

I'm not sure about the rest of your colleagues. Um, but we have more if you want some. Um, but we'll have uh most of his graph mo graphs and tables in there just so that you can have it as a backdrop as you think about the rest of your priorities.

Any questions, concerns? Thank you for your great work.

Thank you.

Yes, that is that is just what I was going to say to say thank you and give a kudos to the entire staff for what they do behind the scenes.

Thank you so much.

Hey, welcome.

Hello. Good morning. Um, name is uh Dr.

Phyisperus and get to the slide here. Uh, so I'm just going to go over some highlights from the recent 2025 Virginia Beach resident survey. Um, again, this presentation was given back in July. Uh, and I'm just going to touch base on uh just the general purpose and methodology of it. um and then also start going into some of the major findings uh from the from the study.

Uh so for the resident survey uh the general purpose of this uh there's four items here. The first is to objectively assess resident satisfaction with the delivery of major city services. Um secondly, the resident survey could help determine priorities for the community.

Also uh we can use it to measure trends from the previous survey. Uh the previous survey that was done was back in 2022.

Um and then also we can use this to compare how Virginia Beach is doing with um other communities both regionally and nationally.

Uh so for the survey, the survey is a p seven-page survey. It takes approximately 15 to 20 minutes to complete. Uh again, this was the second survey that was done. Uh the previous one was done back in 2022.

Um administration was done uh by mail.

uh was also available online and it was distributed to uh randomly selected um city residents.

Uh the goal for the uh the sample was 1,000 residents or thousand responses.

Uh in this case we exceeded that. We had 1,26 completed surveys and that uh is over a 100 per city council district.

Also the margin of error for this is plus and minus 2.8% at the 95% confidence level.

Uh so this map here kind of shows that we had really good representation throughout the city. Um all the red dots here were the responses that we've received. Uh one one thing to also note is that uh the demographics of the survey respondents uh actually reflect the population of the city. So uh we did get a good representation from this the survey.

Uh going to uh overall perceptions here.

Uh it's been very positive overall for the city of Virginia Beach. Uh nearly 90% rated the overall quality of life as excellent or good. Uh over 80% rated Virginia Beach is a great place to live and raise children. Uh 75% were satisfied with the overall city services with only 8% rating them below average or poor. And then 81% of the residents feel safe in Virginia Beach overall.

U now comparing to uh the United States and then also our regional peers uh Virginia Beach uh did rate quite well.

Uh Virginia Beach rated above the US average in 41 of the 50 service areas and 39 of those areas rated significant significantly higher uh which is greater than 3%.

Uh overall service quality rated 26% higher than the national average.

satisfaction with Virginia Beach as a place to live rated 38% above the national average and customer service satisfaction rated 33% higher than national average. Now, in regards to uh comparing us to our regional neighbors, um we rated above the regional average in 36 areas with 33 of those areas rating significantly higher which is greater than 3%.

uh there were some areas where there was uh citywide satisfaction. So all the geographical areas here um saw quality of services as uh being quite good. Uh you can see on the map here, everything here is highlighted as light blue uh which has a rating of good.

Additionally, all geographic areas show the city with high satisfaction with Virginia Beach as a place to live.

Again, you can see all areas showing as blue and there's also two districts here with the darker blue uh and that rated as excellent.

And then lastly, uh all geographic areas showed high satisfaction with Virginia Beach as a place to raise children. Uh again, all area showed as blue and there's two districts with the darker blue rating it as excellent.

Now, in comparison to the resident survey that was done in 2022, there have been some notable improvements in satisfaction. Uh, some of those areas include quality of cultural and entertainment venues, feeling of safety in retail areas, availability of parks and recreation programs for children, feeling of safety in your neighborhood at night, and storm water management flood control on neighborhood streets.

Also since 2022, uh there have been some notable decreases in satisfaction. Um items include effort to protect natural resources in the environment, access to job opportunities that match your skills, confidence in the city's ability to meet basic needs during and after a natural or man-made disaster, how well the city is managing growth, and variety of housing options in the city.

One of the questions that was asked from the residents was for them to identify the top issues over the next three years. Uh what we have listed here are the top five that residents feel will be the next issues for the three years, the next three years. Uh these include affordability of city services, taxes and fees, housing affordability, public safety and crime, flood protection and homelessness.

And then lastly, these are the top overall community priorities. The items listed within the survey allowed the residents to rate both the importance and satisfaction of those items. Uh there was a calculation that was made called the important satisfaction rating. And that in takes into consideration both the importance and also the lack of satisfaction of those items. The items here listed are the

ones that had the most importance and the least satisfaction. Uh so these items are affordable housing, public safety, storm water management and flood control, resident involvement in policy and decision-making, managing growth, major street conditions, and enforcing junk debris cleanup on private property.

And that concludes my presentation.

Thank you.

Okay, any questions?

Barbara, I I was going to ask about this um fact that several actually I think maybe more of the topics show a decline in satisfaction between the 25 and the 22.

Um, are we doing anything to look at these and see why we've declined in satisfaction?

Uh, or if there are particular issues that we need to be working on. I mean, as I mentioned before, the the um ability of the people to have public input is one that they are very low on.

Uh, and it was surprising that they were so consistently dissatisfied with us uh, not enforcing uh, cleanliness or junk removal on local properties that came up all over the place. So, what what are we doing there?

Are we are we particularly looking at these that showed a a decline and trying to pinpoint why and what we might do to improve?

Thank you for that question. I think between Dr. Spirus and myself, survey data is probably our most favorite data set. So, just a couple of things to keep in mind. Um, we don't like yet have a trend, right? This is our second time doing the survey and many of those are within that margin of error when you look at the first survey that we did and this survey. There are few that are not.

Um, but so keep that in mind. We don't yet have a trend. So, trying to see where we landed is important. We had similar questions we asked etc. Um they're seeing an overall trend um in the places that they're surveying. Uh the national climate in itself is really interesting between the public and government right now. Uh but to your point yes uh we are looking at that survey data offers evergreen data. Um so

one of the things that OPA will be doing with um the data sets is looking at opportunities to incorporate it into certain departments um DPPs if your department's one of those areas where we're seeing a decline and we might want to dig further. Um these are liyker scale responses right so they can point you to places you want to peep in a little more but they don't give you the question or answer the question why

what's what's deeper. So, some of the things that Phil and I have talked about was necessarily do we want to do interviews or focus groups around some of these areas so we can dive deeper.

Um, sometimes it's perception, sometimes it's reality. Um, particularly when you get into some of the safety, you might see trends of where crime is actually down, but do people feel safe? Um, so being able to ask the follow-up questions is important. Um, so I would just say keep in mind we don't have a trend. uh the margin of error on some of these survey questions and absolutely to

your point yes uh OPA will be working with departments in an intentional way just to find out how can we discover more about the second set uh but the third time that we do the survey will really be interesting because then we can say we have a trend or not it seems like I remember a lot of citizen surveys I think I've got an awful lot of reports so we might have

done two in with this company but we can track many years with our citizen surveys. I'll I'll bring my stack sometime.

Yeah. And it's fun because survey design questions you get into were the questions written the same way? Were they on the same scale? Um hopefully they all would have been random samples.

I vaguely remember who we used previously didn't really have benchmarking data against the region or the nation. Um which is one of the reasons we wanted to get someone in who could offer that. Um but absolutely we have those similar data sets and we explore from all sorts of areas um including cross tabs and things of seeing where are they declining. So tons of analysis on it.

Okay.

Anyone else? Uh Hutchin and Amelia.

So just one of them that I looked at under the notable uh decreases and I fully appreciate what you're saying as far as a trend and new and and the fact that some of them can be seen that way you know and I think the media does play a little bit of a part of it in it. And then I'm specifically talking about confidence in a city's ability to meet basic needs

during and after a natural man-made disaster. Um that to me shows that there's something to miss because we have had nothing but um we don't like for it to happen but when it does happen I can speak you know we're on our our state level teams for like hazmat technical rescue and stuff like that.

Your city has a state level team inside the city and then we also have a state level team. You see what I'm saying?

We're equivalent and that's been proven over and over. Our police department has been called up to do the inaugurations and stuff like that. Well, you don't get called to stuff like that unless you're at the top of your game. E911 has added the AI stuff so that we've cut down the calls. EM has got the latest technology.

They just redid the EOC. So, we've had nothing to show other than we've had some stuff happen in the western part of the state of which we responded to to help out. But the western part of the state maybe things didn't go as well as they could have. I'm not throwing any stones. I wasn't there. But if you see some of the national stuff, right, it shows a little bit that things maybe

could have been handled better. And I would say not the Virginia Beachway. So I feel very confident in that. So that one just kind of jumped out at me. Thank you.

Yeah, Patrick.

Mr. Mayor, Council Member Hutcherson's point.

I'm incidentally anecdotally don't know if this is um like a qu a quantitative thing with the survey but to your point around that time when folks were responding to the survey response you had the wildfires in California you had the historic floods that flooded Asheville and also the western part of the city right so all those things kind of go in people's mind and you see the the same dichotomy in that folks were

satisfied and and impressed with the work that we've done on storm water but still also rated one of their big concerns was flood protection right all those things can be true at the same time they said hey kudos good job on the efforts on the flood protection program but this is really thing that we're still concerned about you know so I think all those things kind of play into it

and not to belver that but two things I do want to share on that and similar to what uh council member Hutchinson is saying because I know communications and TOPS they're working on a community awareness right because some of it is like making people aware of how they can improve their own safety Um, I know in another community we did probably what we're going to do here, theirs was around safety. Um, the police

chief was like downtown came back rated much lower than we thought. But when you looked at crime stats, it was the safest it had ever been. So we did like community groups. We got people back together and it was things like litter, lighting, um, getting graffiti removed.

So that's where having conversations with people, you can see what's influencing that. So, it could be people want to know, how can they have better personal readiness? Um, how can they connect with the city? So, that's what these follow-up conversations will give us the opportunity to peel back the layers to make sure we're working on the parts that matter most. Um, but the survey gives us almost a compass of how

do we go in the right direction, but diving deeper requires us to actually talk to people. So that's what we'll do, you know, and if I can bring up two sterling examples about our response, uh, Hutch, one of which was a number of years ago with the Good Friday miracle when an airplane crashed right in the middle of a an apartment complex. I mean, the response by fire, EMS, police,

everybody or emergency response, it was classic. And the other one a couple years ago in April, you know, when we had a tornado touchdown in a in a neighborhood, thankfully that was another miracle because nobody was uh there was no loss of life, nobody was hurt. But if you go around uh you know, the site right after, you saw emergency response, community engagement were there. Uh the

insurance companies were out and uh trees were being cleared almost as soon as it happened.

And u you know recently at a um you know the storm I had a you know a chat with the weather channel and the one thing I brought up is that we have FEMA teams right here in terms of our always being ready that go out and help other people as Hutch would say. So you know that you know I think that's a point of pride that we have that we are so adept at

that area our emergency management and uh you know coordination and we also help several adjacent cities to supplement. So we got a point of pride there.

Thank you. So Mr. Mayor, we're um I've got one more thing to talk through in terms of sharing our current context. We talked through the accomplishments, the demographics, the resident survey.

There's a um one last piece of paper in your handout says departmental directors environmental scan themes. So we also spent hour and a half with department directors to hear what some of the um successes and challenges they're facing that we wanted to bring to your attention. I'm going to not highlight the successes that are on these um on this paper. Encourage you to read them.

most of them made their way into the accomplishments drawing or the other accomplishments handout that you have.

So, I just want to highlight some of the challenges that the department directors say they're paying attention to as you start thinking about what your priorities are for the next um two years. So, we categorize them again in the govern um envision invigorate. In the govern category, the demographic makeup of the city is changing due to aging and out migration and that impacts the services that departments are being

asked to provide. Uh sustainable funding and programming for city services is a challenge. Um departments are looking to leverage revenue options in an efficient way to provide the sustainable funding.

affordability impacts residents and it impacts city staff. It's um causing difficulty in recruiting and succession planning and housing costs.

Uh policy and funding changes at the state and federal levels are causing a lot of uncertainty.

Uh the city is anticipating reduced support going forward.

there's a lot um of expectation that there's not going to be as much federal money coming to localities um and states and so the city needs to prepare for that uncertainty of uh reduced federal and state support.

Um uh enhancement of community engagement, marketing, social media and communication has been uh strong. It's also combined with a changing landscape of news media. And so because the news media has a smaller reach or smaller staff, uh residents are informed on specific topics, but there's declining civic awareness overall. And so that impacts when you're trying to um reach out to people. it's harder to reach them

because they know about one issue that's of importance to them but maybe not the whole picture that you all as council members know. Um and then there's increased public engagement expectations uh can lead to longer project timelines which delays delivery. So the more we involve the public which is important the longer it takes to uh complete projects. Flipping the page to envision.

Again, I'm going to skip the successes, but there are many. Um, in envision, the challenges, um, there's a theme uh, uncertainty in navigating changes made by the federal and state government.

That's not just funding, it's also regulations changing.

Um, there's challenges about conflicting goals and visions, particularly around land use and development and redevelopment. So when there is a lack of clear direction for staff, they need more direction to be able to make progress.

Um updating the comprehensive plan is a huge effort and it also is uh um has a lot of other implications. It's going to need to be accompanied by other ordinance updates, redevelopments, zoning changes, um etc.

limited land available for new development impacted by limitations um such as industrial use, air rights, noise zones, soil issues, neighborhood concerns. So they hear loud and clear an interest in economic development and there's limited land available because of these different restrictions. So there's a tension there. And then adjusting services according to the community population needs. As the

demographics change, the services need to change. And then finally in the invigorate section, again a theme, policy and funding changes at higher levels of government causes uncertainty for programs and for service delivery. So staff is trying to navigate those changes.

Um, service demands are beginning to outnumber available resources, whether it's staff or time or money. Um, a need to prioritize diversifying revenue streams for city services so we're not just relying on a few streams.

Unfunded mandates combined with cuts at the federal and state level complicates how localities can provide um needed services.

Uh there's a need to keep up with emerging technology, innovation, and upgrades to ease resource issues and meet stakeholder expectations.

And it's not written here, but that takes time and money to keep up with um emerging technology in order to save money.

um across all departments, pretty much all departments, they um they are concerned about sustainable asset management. Um even the departments that aren't very visible to the public. So there's a lot of very public assets, facilities, fleets, etc. other departments all have concerns about their um their assets and the funding to sus keep up with the capital upgrades.

There's many important CIP projects that aren't funded. So, they're on your radar, but they're not funded. and aging infrastructure across the city needs to be addressed and sometimes is depprioritized because something else becomes a higher priority and that can compound maintenance costs.

Um and then finally balancing uh giving key areas in the city attention and funds while addressing the needs of all areas of the city equitably. the staff is very aware and concerned about addressing priority needs, but also at the same time addressing all of the city and treating all residents equitably. And that's hard to do given the constraints.

So, um, we wanted to share some of what's on staff's mind before you start, um, planning for your priorities.

What what I want to do briefly is just ask for reflections on these four topics. We just talked about the the um accomplishments that we walked through, the demographics, the resident survey, and these challenges from department directors. any um you came into the room thinking about your priorities, but are there any things that you're taking away from these presentations or handouts

that we've just walked through that you think you need to be carrying forward as you start talking about your priorities um for the next two years?

Okay. Anything we have right now, Stacy?

Uh thank you. getting to the um demographics.

Uh the demographic for the last several years shows that there's been no real growth of population in Virginia Beach.

And you know, I would contend that that's really due to people migrating out of the area going to uh surrounding surrounding cities and as far down as into North Carolina. It's not because Virginia Beach is uh not attractive or not attracting people.

It's just that the uh migration of people to places with more affordable housing is greater than we're bringing people in. And we need to continue to look at ways to make the housing more affordable because as time goes on, we're going to be losing school teachers and our emergency services and other city uh you know, valuable city employees. And if we can't have places for them to live, we're not going to be

able to replace them because the the competition amongst the other cities and localities uh is is getting greater. And if they can make the same salary and not have to drive across uh you know several miles to get to work, the the attraction to stay here in Virginia Beach and to be employed here is going to be deterred.

So, we really that just makes the affordable housing issue even greater than we've seen in the past.

Okay.

Okay.

Well said, Josh.

Um, thank you. And absolutely well said, Councilman. Um, and and I think, you know, we're not unique in in the the demographic shift by any means. I mean, it is we're having less kids these days.

Um, there's a, you know, aging baby boomer population. Um, and that population pyramid is no longer a pyramid. It's more of a a cylinder or a column. And um, which means cities like ours, regions, we're competing for people. We're competing for talented workers. And um, and just like the councilman said, it all goes back to housing because we we need we need to be able to attract the people to live here.

We need to be able to attract the the workforce talent in order to attract the new business and and to help alleviate um residential taxpayers from the tax burden and diversify the tax revenue um you know by by growing the business tax income.

Okay, Amelia and then Barbara.

Well, quite a few of the things I did want to say have been brought up, but I looked at the top five issues that we have over the three years. Affordability of city services, housing, public safety, flood protection, which is very important, and homelessness.

Um, between all of those, I noticed some analogy that we're looking at aging population and aging uh infrastructure or both go hand in hand. So this is a problem because we have to keep up with new technology with all of this keep up our buildings and it all cost money and with inflationary costs at this time. We've got to look at them you know side by side.

One of the things as especially to do with our um demographics that we've mentioned the out migration, we've also mentioned the importance of some of our elderly making sure they're able to age in place. That is key because we have like Arona and several uh communities that have been here a long time and they would love to live continuously in this area and if they can maybe some of their children can

also join in in getting jobs here. But we've got to look at both not only our demographics but actually our infrastructure, our buildings. recently as you know we are so happy to be able to move the election group into somewhere else. All of these matter and attract people when they see that we are paying attention not only to ourselves but the housing just like you do for your regular house. You have to always

maintain. So this is important. Thank you.

Thank you Barbara. And then coach, well, really just following up on what Ameilia was saying, um, with these two points that that I was thinking of as far as our flat growth and so forth, is that we concentrate on quality in Virginia Beach rather than quantity.

And the quality will result in the quantity as people are deciding where they're going to live. I think the quality of our services is extremely important. and and we certainly have a city that nobody else can match as far as its uh natural uh amenities. Uh who else has got the beach and the waterfront and all of these wonderful things that we have uh in our environment and those things are

what attracts people. And so I think our mission is to make certain that we provide the quality of services and maintain the quality of this place that is so special.

But then we also have to make sure that it doesn't get to be too expensive to live in Virginia Beach. Uh we can't necessarily control the u uh a lot of the things that are cost of living, but we certainly have to control the taxes.

And I think we have to look at to see what our taxes are and make certain that we don't outpric people so that they can't afford to live in Virginia Beach.

I kind of think we're maxed out with our taxes and that's going to be a real challenge as we try to provide the services that we don't find out that that our taxes can't cover the cost. You know, we raised the u the meal tax this past year and I think it's is at the top, folks. We can't go any higher. And about the same thing with our real estate because of the the

assessment increases, which we really can't control that much. So, I think those two issues are going to be the ones that we really have to deal with that are very difficult. But that's that's where it is. If we're going to attract people, it's got to be quality and it's got to be not only affordability in housing costs, but affordability in things like tax rates.

Hey, Hutch. So, I just wanted it's similar, but it's slightly different of what everybody's been saying is is that um what the deputy city manager Kroski and Mr. Evans from uh HR Alliance presented to us some, you know, I did make some some notes about it. Um you know, they're saying the median rent now is $1650.

You know, that was double my first house payment, more than my house I'm living in. So to hear that that's the median, you know, that's that's as as what Miss Henley is saying, you know, things are getting uh getting quite almost out of reach is what it feels like, especially for the folks in our city that work here, which leads to the migration, right? That's what I'm that's what I'm really concerned about. Um and

it goes across all of our employee staff. You know, I speak a lot about the public safety part, but you know, uh, all the way all the way down the line, everybody's got to get to work. Whether we've got to I think about the snowstorm this year, you know, I mean, what a testament to what we have in place in this city is that by noon, 1:00 the next day, most of our businesses were either

back open or moving towards being back open. And there's what, 900 square miles of roads to be cleared. So, you know, it's it's it's everybody's got a got a play in this. And so when I see this uh one of the slides we had, you know, it shows a $150,000 uh home sale price versus affordable home, you know, and I think that's I think that's a u that's a lot. And it

went up and it went up from 2018 at $26,000. I mean, my goodness, how does it go up that fast? I mean, that's just incredible. And then um and then obviously we showed I think Mike did a very good job showing that we're we're building the $750,000 homes and we're building a lot of the multif family, but we need that middle we need that middle ground which is about the 350 mark. I'm I'm I'm coming

to an end. But the you know one of the takeaways for me in the considerations that y'all put forward and I think it's where we do have to work with our development partners. you know, they get a bad rap a lot of times, but if we let them know, which we're doing right now, that these are the home prices that we need you to come in at, and they do their own homework. They understand.

I've talked to a couple of, they know that as well, but we have to help with that, and I think the uh the grant and stuff like that is working in that direction. But I would implore us to figure out any way we can to get that that that number up so that the prices can be affordable at the like the 350 mark. You know, because you're talking about engineers and battalion chiefs and

people that are in the mid-level management or above and they're having a hard time affording or they need two two incomes coming in to make this affordable. Anyway, I know this is I'm being a little long, but I really feel this is of the utmost importance. If you're looking at one of our top five and what we're having to address, I think this is one of them. Thank you.

Let's go with work and Michael.

Thank you, Mayor Dyer. This is a great discussion. Follow up on last week when we were presented uh the numbers and I'll kind of repeat a little bit of what I said last week. Uh I call it the flight to the exerbs or going to cheaper housing in areas where it's less affordable. We're a victim of our own success here. With that being said, and and also this is not we're not alone. I

mean, Fairfax County, home to nine Fortune 500 companies, great jobs, highpaying jobs. They have zero growth.

It's all about affordability. So, that being said, no easy answers. We can't make houses affordable other than maybe uh supporting more dense density, and that's a touchy issue. But I'll get back to setting priorities because we do need to keep the cost of government down and our taxes as affordable as we can at the same time giving city services that the public deserves. And so I get back to I

think the sub the public wants public safety and they want great public schools and of course transportation and the other things in the discussion this earlier today about the ITA. I think that's all aspirational. I mean, it was a great discussion, but I don't know where we're going to find the money, but so I get back. I think we should set our priorities on public safety, the basic

core services of local government. Thank you, Michael.

Thank you. I agree. It's a really good discussion. And when I look at the top five issues over the next three years, I see a few things. One is a common thread, but um a piece of that is missing, and that's jobs, jobs, jobs. We spent a little time in the beginning talking about ITA and whether it's uh economic development expansion with innovation park or whether it's sports tourism um both could simultaneously

um expand our economy and provide economic opportunity and mobility for people who live here. and and I think having a discussion about what these top five issues are without talking about economic mobility, expanding our economy and uh and that's really what economic development is all about. It's we talk about it in terms of, you know, revenue and and economic impact, but what we're

talking about is jobs for people and you want to address the housing afford affordability crisis, the affordability of city services taxes, public safety, homelessness. I would add to that list mental health which uh council member Ross Hammond elevated earlier. Um all of many of those things are substantially impacted by the presence of meaningful job opportunities and we can't have a

discussion about any of those things without prioritizing that. In my mind, it's also a sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Without economic mobility, economic opportunity, job opportunities of many different sorts, we will not be able to we will continue to have an aging population that will be in need of more services. and because of their retirement status and the limitations and um on their household budget that

come with retirement will be uh more challenging to um confront the affordability of city services. So I think that has to be prioritized um uh at the top of the heap. And there was something else I was going to add to that, but I can't remember what it is right now. So maybe we'll circle back.

Been there, done that. I tell you what, if I could just you perhaps, you know, capsulize things. You know, this is a situation that all localities are facing, not just us. Uh, you know, Patrick and I are reconvening the mayors and chairs of all the people in the the 757 because we share the same concerns, the same problems going forward. and you know we have to work on it among oursel

but we have to work with the other cities uh because we're all necessary and integrated with the economic vitality but I'll tell you it was a great conversation and Mike I think Michael I think you had a I had a restoration um of my train of thought schools you know we I I don't see schools on the list and the schools may not be on the list because our educational system in

Virginia Beach is so good and so strong that sometimes Sometimes we have a tendency to possibly take it for granted, but we have an amazing um K through 12 public education system in Virginia Beach with incredible people who work there and our the students are high performing. It's first first second day at school. So, I'm sure that they're all excited to be back. Um but this is

key to all the things that we addressed before. Um we just have to make sure that we continue to keep it on track. Um I think we have work to do though in the early childhood education space and I don't think we have um tackled and how that relates to jobs and economic mobility and prosperity but also um childhood development and early childhood education is a is an place where we need work and I would include

higher ed in that too. There have been some exciting developments, lots of growth, but um but higher educational opportunities is another thing that I think our region needs to address, but as a city, we're making progress, but have more work to do.

So, mayor, I'm right on time. Um before we break for lunch, we asked you um council members to come in prepared to share your top up to five priorities for the next 24 months. I'm not going to ask you to share them now, but I'm going to ask you to write them down now so that after lunch you can all share them.

We've got um five big post-it notes for each of you and so you can write up to five. We also have a very specific number of dots for later. We're not going to let any um miscounting happen later.

So um preserve preserve your dots for later.

Uh so again you you were asked to come in knowing some I'll just of your priorities but you heard you just heard some more about your accomplishments more about the demographics more about what's uh the residents are saying and what's on your department director's minds. So if um if you want to adjust what you said you thought you were going to say, you are welcome to do that. So write one priority per big p post-it

note. If you write and you want to rewrite something, let us know. But you've only got five post-it notes, so we'll swap one out. Um and then we're going to break for lunch. Any questions about what I'm asking you to do right now?

Oh, sure. Yeah.

Thanks, Julie. Yeah. So, like public safety, you just put public safety down or do you put specifics about public safety or public education or if someone says make Virginia Beach more affordable? I mean, that's certainly our priority. How do you do that?

Yeah. So, we will be spending time after lunch when you share this going into more detail so that the staff knows what you mean. I'm assuming that a lot of you are going to have similar priorities, so we'll be grouping some of them. Um, if I were a staff member and I just heard public safety, I would say I'm not quite sure what he wants. And so more detail

is better, but if it's an umbrella for a lot of things that you want to say, you can um you can have the big big umbrella with some more detail.

Um, Council Member Henley, did you have a question, too?

Yeah.

same question.

Okay.

Yes, Dr.

Just on another note from um Councilman Felushi, we welcome 60,000 students for this year, K through 12.

Um, I will ask you to use the Sharpies because it's easier to see from a distance and I can give you different um post-it notes if you um so with that we are going to leave you doing your writing and we're going to take a 45 minute lunch break. So, it's 11:48 to We're calling it 11:50. Tell me what 45 minutes after 11:50 is.

12:35.

12:35 we're coming back. So, if anyone needs to get some fresh air, make some phone calls, write some emails, you're welcome to, but please be back by 12:35.

Um, and I believe lunch is ready in the back room for anyone that wants to start.

And we're on break.