City Council Special Meeting, Retreat Day 1 Morning session on 08/26/25, Clip 2 of 3.

ing your 24month uh focused action plan priorities. I'm going to ask each of you to share your up to top five priorities you brought into the room after listening to the feedback we discussed this morning as well as all of the conversations you have with your constituents all the time. After you've each shared, um, we'll allow you to ask each other questions to make sure you understand

what each other means by these different priorities.

I'll also allow the staff to ask questions in case they're not quite sure what some of these things mean. Um, after we've done that, we'll take a after lunch quick break. We're going to start organizing your ideas. I am expecting that you have a lot of shared priorities as well as some divergent priorities. So we'll start grouping the shared priorities together. We will ask you to um dot vote your highest

priorities at that time and then the ones that elevate to um to the higher priorities will go into deeper discussions of what would that look like to succeed in that area. in the next 24 months, what do you think could be accomplished or what would you hope could be accomplished in the next 24 months? Um, and then the staff starting tomorrow will take what you define as your priorities. They'll look at what

they can do. They'll solicit some community input on it and they'll develop a um f 24-month focused action plan so that they can then use that with all the infrastructure deputy manager Kroski talked about this morning to um make sure that they can be advancing your priorities and showing um showing progress. So that's our plan for this afternoon.

With that, I'm going to ask you to start by sharing your priorities. I'm going to give you five minutes to share your five priorities. Um, and would welcome anyone to volunteer to go first.

Get it out of the way.

Um so um, public safety then all employees under that. I think it's I've said enough.

I believe in that. Um, next would be uh infrastructure, uh, overall health of the city, flooding, um, bridges, anything anything that's going to keep our city as, uh, as good as it is right now or better. And I think we do a pretty good job of that.

Um, with that, um, I've already spoken again about the housing, as you can see.

I did try to pay attention to what you ask us. um the housing and the midlevel uh prices there are where I think we need to put our focus not to not to necessarily stop with the others but put some focus and why can't we have it all you know what I mean let's do all three levels of housing um and with that I've already said is to work with the trusted

developers to make it happen that it's work is work for them I think they'd be happy for it so that to me is important um homelessness is something that I've been working on since the '9s. So, uh I believe in it. I don't think uh they should be looked down upon. I think we should try to do the best we can to help them. Mental health issues. Um yes, some of them have had have their problems

with addiction and everything else and that makes things even harder. But by the same stance, that's where we should put some of our our funding because I do think it shows uh being a caring society and a and a top level city, you need to care for everyone in it. So, that's important to me. Uh, and then lastly, I put I didn't just put schools, I put education. Um, I think there's a, as

we're seeing, it's a broader picture, a broader picture of what is needed um there across the board. All things education, whether it's buildings or or the people or um special special programs or whatever we're, you know, doing it. But I also want to say about that is um we do have a whole another entity um that helps take care of schools and education, right? That's the school

board and they're working with their own set of leaders as well. Um yeah, they're coming under some fire right now, but uh and as a whole uh I think they are at the top of the top of the heap as well.

And so I don't know that we have to put as much effort there. We need to take care of our part of the funding and look at it and we have as the vice mayor and everybody else we have some people that have a little more experience with it so we need to pay attention to it but I think the other four are more our focus and then we assist where needed and

warranted with the education. Thanks.

Perfect. Thank you.

Nice job Stacy.

Uh thank you. Um let's see. I'll go to the ones that have already been covered.

affordable housing.

I think um I spoke to that earlier. I truly believe that's high. Uh then the infrastructure that we need to improve, modernize our infrastructure that includes the storm water just like I just said. But then I have um more higher paying jobs. Uh a lot of a lot of uh what we're talking about as far as the demographics and us getting older. It's not that well we are aging but we're our young people are migrating

out of the city and it's because they can't afford to live here and the jobs that they're seeking aren't available.

So we need to look at and also with that you know the the burden that's on homeowners with the taxes which is another one.

So if we had more an influx of more higher paying jobs, more industry that uh that would reduce the burden on the homeowners. It would uh give us the ability to have more affordable housing and uh keep our keep our younger people here. And then the last on my list is maintain our city services. We have a first class city. We offer first class city services. people are uh by and large uh overwhelmingly happy with what

the city has to offer and we need to find ways to to keep up that level of service.

Thank you.

Okay. Uh let's Michael, do you have your hand up?

Oh, yeah. Thank you. Um one of my priorities is safety, safe neighborhoods schools workplaces and public spaces. For me, that includes the establishment of Lita and um ultimately ensuring that those individuals and and receive the resources they need to do their job and the compensation. So much like council member Hutcherson, I would like to provide an addendum to the safety that

extends to all city employees that they have the tools that they need, the res the compensation they deserve, and um the support that they need from council and our community to continue providing the excellent services they do. But we know that a top priority for our community is safety. Without that, we can do nothing else. Um, with our schools, they should be wellresourced, high performing, and

provide educational excellence.

Some of the things that I often hear when we have conversations about schools relates to compensation and benefits.

And frankly, I'd like to hear a little bit more um about student achievement and performance in addition to the um other conversations we have about compensation and benefit and think about our educational system more holistically than just the um needs of the staff. We need to prioritize the needs of the students and make sure we continue to have a high performing school division, which we do.

Job opportunities, economic mobility, and prosperity. I think my I'll defer to my previous comments on which were exhaustive on those topics.

Um low taxes, housing affordability, and just general affordability is a top priority. And and I will um include flood protection especially for district 3 that was most substantially impacted by hurricane Matthew in 2016. And I wish I had another five.

If we could have more dots, can we have more the All right.

Thank you.

Okay. Worth.

Thank you, Mayor D. And a lot these priorities are the same for the most part as the other councilman members have said. Um, and I wish I had some more sheets as well, but u I agree.

Public safety is going to be a common thread and that's uh what I hear from the public the most. So public safety, let's talk about that equipment and technology which we have made great advances and investments uh as per requested by our leaders. And by the way, public safety is not just police, it's fire, EMS, all all areas of it. So equipment, technology as well as salary and benefits.

That also makes our city more affordable if you have higher paying public safety um staff. public education as already stated um by council member Belaluchcci technology and equipment I hear that as well as modernizing schools we we are behind now and if we don't do anything soon we're going to become even more behind further behind and that's some of our schools are very nice a lot of our

schools are not very nice and that's that's really a matter of equity uh much less investment in our schools and of Of course, teacher salaries and benefits, which isn't an issue these days in terms of medical benefits for for teachers. I know we knew that when we um pass the budget, but that's again back to affordability. Higher paying jobs helps pay higher mortgages.

Uh as already stated, more and higher paying jobs and the inventory in which to obtain those higher paying jobs. That inventory means new office buildings, new industrial uh buildings, new retail projects throughout the city. That does raise uh the 14% of our real estate tax.

We want to raise that closer if we can get even come close to 20%, but I'll take 15 or 16%. But that also attract attracts young people, retains young people, retains our existing businesses, and also helps our tax base. Here's something a little different that I do strongly believe in. I think this will resonate. Better local internal transportation that includes of course DB trail. So

trails, not just roads, trails, microransit, employee transportation.

So that's a big title, a lot of infra infrastructure, but that is a priority.

And here's one. I'm gonna phrase it a different way than council member Belaluchcci said.

Not increasing the real estate tax. This this is goals, right? I know that's gonna Sorry, folks. That's an aspiration.

Um and we'll see where it goes. Or any other local taxes and perhaps reducing the meals tax to 5% from 6%. It's not fair that we as a government, state and local, charge 12%, six and six. Six for state, six and local. 12% on one business, restaurants when when the state sales tax on other things is 6%. I just I voted for the budget. I understand. I'm sorry, but I think the restaurants are being unfairly taxed.

Thank you.

Hey Barbara.

I voted against that tax increase.

Um the first my first priority is that we've got the trust and confidence of our citizens.

If we don't have the trust and the confidence of our citizens, we cannot do anything. And unfortunately, I hear an awful lot. It doesn't matter if we come down and talk and what we say.

They've got their minds made up. They're not going to pay any attention to us.

And I look in this resident survey and I see very low the opportunity for resident participation in city policy development and decisionmaking. We might say that we're doing it, but if the perception is that we aren't, then that's what it is. And I think we really have to work on making sure the government or our citizens trust the city council and have confidence in us.

And I don't think we're probably as high up with those things as we need to be.

A second priority, of course, is safety.

Um, and I particularly am concerned about the shooting. Uh, every morning when you cut on the radio or the television, you say, "Well, I wonder how many shootings there were last night and how many there were in Virginia Beach." We didn't used to have shootings. That didn't happen here. But there's something that's gotten into our culture that everybody's got to have a gun. And this shooting business is

has just gotten out of hand. I don't know why, but uh somehow or other uh we've got to try to come up with some way to deal with this. One is too many. Uh we just shouldn't be having it at all. And it's particularly a concern to me that so much involves our youth because a lot of this shooting is done by u uh juveniles and there seems to be this perception

that you've got everybody's got to have a gun. And so I I think we really need to concentrate on what we make available for our youth. And as I talk about the ITA with recreation, that can be one of the ways that we can do this. But if there's a void, something's going to fill it. And I I'm afraid that this violence and this shooting aspect is what is filling the void with our youth.

And I think we have to be just very much concerned and make sure that we're offering whatever we can uh particularly to our youth to make sure that this uh this perception is uh doesn't go on.

It's it's just It's not right and um we've got to do something about it. And that leads me to the uh completion of the implementation plan for recreation and preservation of the ITA because if we do that that's going to touch these other topics that I've got and one of them will be the youth. I just see that this opportunity for having all of this sports activity uh with teams and team building as a

great opportunity for our youth to help fill that void that they need to have something to do uh with their time rather than just hanging out and waiting for something to happen. let let's let's let them be a part of all of these things and make sure that we we provide these activities if we're going to do it with sports not only just for sports tourism but sports for our people too

particularly our youth. I just it it still gives me chills every time I think about those two boys that saved that drowning man last winter and when they were asked how did you know exactly what you needed to do and they said our wrestling coach.

So with youth and and and and team building and sports it's far more than what they're getting out of the the sporting activities. I already have one minute to wrap up.

Okay. Um that that's an important one to me. The environmental appreciation, flooding, soil and land conditions, marsh restoration, tree mitigation, sea level rise, all of these things that we need to be concerned about as far as the special environment that Virginia Beach has that makes us what we are. And then the quality of life for our citizens. I want us to make sure we're constantly reviewing our services to

asssure that we're meeting the needs of our very demographics in all of our departments to make sure we're not overlooking something that our our particular people need.

Okay. Do we have anybody else on this side here? We're good. Okay. Jennifer.

Um All right. So the all similar I think across the city um flooding workforce high wage jobs and maintain our quality education system and then uh for the city but specific to district 10 um and similar to what Miss Henley was saying um as part of public safety and youth development activities for youth um that's another affordability issue. if it's camps, if it's sports, if it's something and that

costs money and parents can't pay those fees, what opportunities do kids have to do something constructive? So, um um so activities for youth and um particularly for housing access and affordability.

Something um unique to District 10 is how many of our housing communities are plan communities, so have HOAs or condos. And that is another element of affordability where um it's the balancing what the city's responsible for, what the HOA is responsible for, and for a lot of those residents, both are increasing. So, um, when thinking about developments and what kind of development we're offering and how

affordable is it, not just with city services, but when they're if they're private, if they're renting, if they're HOAs, um, that we should weigh all of those things to ensure, uh, people have access to stable homes um, and home ownership if they choose to. Um, just wanted to add that. Thank you.

Thank you, Cash.

Thank you. um being in this seat for a little over eight months um I've been out in the community and so these are real live uh data um taken by my feet uh on the ground and so not by a computer not uh this is actually being there in person. One of those um that we that I would love to see us focus more on is senior services.

Um on Auburn Drive, College Park area, I have over 500 seniors and different buildings, but in that block over 500 seniors and what's lacking is transportation, right?

And so I see them catching the bus um where it could be dangerous. I'm sitting out there in my car on a Tuesday making sure that they catch the bus, but I can't be there everywhere. So um we've got a wonderful um human service and I was grateful to have connected with human services today. So and and I'm hoping to get some direction from staff on that uh angle.

Next, food at senior services.

Some of them are living on their retirement checks, uh, social security and Medicaid.

Um, and with that being said, they've got activity coordinators who are going to the food pantries to pick up food so they can make their um their weeks worth of food last. So that's something that very important. And then dental for senior services. Next, um sports tourism. Um Virginia Beach is known to be sports tourism. That's us. But under that category is youth sports, right?

And so we've got traveling teams that play at the Sports Flex. Um, we've we've got teams that are not connected with the recreation center that are West Kimsville.

I guess football used to be a part, but that structure needs to be improved a little bit more because the chain of command isn't there like it used to be.

And again, I'm new on council, but I'm out there boots on the ground. And I can tell you this that we've got a rec center, then we've got West Kimsville, we've got youth leagues, we've got so many different We need to tighten that up because the chain of command there is is lacking. Um, but Director Kershman, you're great and your team is great. I'm not saying that about you. I'm just

saying that um we need to pull together.

Um, I noticed that we now have girls flag football on the rise. Well, I went out there to visit the girls flag football and they had no one there watching them.

Yet, these girls are out there competing and I was so proud and I'm cheering. Uh, so we need a little more marketing for our women in sports, our girls in sports.

Um, next, trade schools. Certifications are everything for me. Okay, you're good.

Uh, certifications. I got one minute.

Okay, I can do this. Um, yes, you can.

So, certification. Yeah. And yes, I will. Uh, certifications are everything.

Um, and I think we need to focus on a little bit more in my opinion are trade schools from middle school, high school, vote, a little more emphasis on trade schools, marketing there. And then um um for recreation center district 7 um looking at the non the the the faith way for them to have um a place of uh connection to community. So I'm looking at talking with some of the pastors and seeing if

they would like to have a multiuse center um because it's too hard for us to build one in in district 7. Um, and then lastly, food pantry.

We need to make sure that our food pantries are stocked with the federal cuts that are happening. We need to ensure that we Virginia Beach have vital food pantries. And I've got one reset.

Josh, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Uh, my first one is continued progress on roads and infrastructure and the CIP backlog. Um I think that's part of keeping our promises and and um you know we've got obviously aging infrastructure and I commend the council including you know everybody even even even if we didn't want to vote for the budget or certain aspects of it um that um that meals tax

was not alone um in creating the major projects fund it came alongside the ARP and the TIF and Town Center and um open space and um and it created it created a a really important tool for us to get through some of this backlog. And I keep hearing that we are the highest meals tax in I don't know the region and the state, the country. Um NOFK NOFK's meals tax is

13.5% combined. Um and we are we're not the highest meals tax in the country. So I just I wanted to I want to at least address that since it had been said twice. Um, and I that doesn't mean I'm not sympathetic to our restaurant members.

Um, next is uh preserving and protecting our coastal environment. Um, planting trees. I think we can do a lot of that.

I mean, we've got money for it. Um, and um, and we're doing it. Uh, and we can partner with nonprofit organizations to help us leverage um, our ability to plant trees on public and hopefully private property. Um, you know, we've heard things like um tree preservation easements and and things. Um, I'd love to get that um that task force back together um that uh that looked at um tree canopy that you had

you had put together, Miss Emley. Um and you know, just doing stuff like what we did a couple weeks ago with u you know reiterating our opposition to offshore drilling off Virginia's coast. Um, so all of those things are things that we can do to protect our environment, attracting young young talent and new business, um, diversifying our revenue stream. Um, things that other people

have talked around on the table. There's lots of different pieces to that.

Education, education is so many things. Uh but it's also an economic development um you know people generator opportunity generator housing um investments in place making uh continued investments in placemaking making making our community an exciting one for both residents and visitors prioritiz prioritizing tourism investments um because we've got lots of that coming at us and choices to make um

cultural and arts investments like we've been making Virginia Beach Trail, Rudy Park, Atlantic Park, all of those things are part of this attract attracting young people and growing our our business. Um tax revenue, um land use, uh that is um my next one. Um and there's a whole bunch in that. I mean, we're obviously almost through the count plan update. Um I really do I'm I'm glad

to know that next step will be a zoning ordinance update. um reaffirm commitment to our strategic growth areas. And if we want to see people building things and places that don't disturb neighborhoods and don't upset the environment, then we got to find ways to incentivize people to do that. Um because obviously right now the market if left to its own um isn't necessarily producing or hasn't

produced the results we want to see. Um lastly, neighborhood and traffic safety and connectivity. Um so those are things that are um you know soft spots for me.

Um as you all know being in representing older part of our city where we don't have the things like you know crosswalks and sidewalks and traffic signals and pedestrian refues. So um so those are all important.

Okay. Thank you Amelia.

Thank you.

On my list, I have education and comparable job skill sets. It's important because what we did many years ago has changed. So, we need to have that type of uh skill sets so those coming for jobs will be able to get something that is able to maintain them.

Uh addressing technical needs, investing in our workforce development. I've put what we've already done with SWAM, the small women and minority business to continue that. And one thing I noticed, I had my district 4 uh community meeting last night and we had uh President Scott Miller from Virginia Wesleyan University. He keeps calling it Virginia Beach University because of certain things that they're doing with our

police. He has a new program with the health sciences. Those are all job skills evenly doing something with those who are coming out of incarceration and also offering um more free courses even on Saturdays just for the community. So that was exciting to hear.

So education is key not just for the K through 12 but beyond. Uh my second I have is uh flood protection, storm management and to do with safety because I remember where um we had that big flood in Rosemont and so forth and it was terrible but we have done a lot to put up the gateways um to you know address that. So we're on the right track. The third I have is affordable housing, seniors,

the workforce, our new graduates so they don't go somewhere else and this can also be a strong way for the homeless because we have a large veteran population and you will see a lot of veterans out there or at least they're wearing some of the veteran um paraphernalia um needing housing. So, we're addressing that. I'm glad um we have the housing advisory and all of that. And that also

leads right into mental health. So, that all comes under affordable housing. My third is communication, especially with our citizens.

That is important. We're doing a pretty good job at it, but there's still a need. A lot of people just need that extra. And one little thing I put along here from my mom. She used to say, "Don't hang your hat where you cannot reach it." I'm sure some of you have heard that.

Okay. So, I've put down managing our resources during this age of inflationary costs. We need to look at that. We want everything, but we are not a Christmas box. We have to look at how we manage what we have and the last is adequate infrastructure sustainability especially for mobility transportation.

Um HRT is coming up with their system optimization and even last night some people said we have problem getting from here to there and I told them about the microtransit. So, how we can look at this and how we can address through our Hampton Roads Transit and ourselves what we can do for transportation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Rosemary.

Well, this is really great and everybody's comments are very well taken and it just shows that to be a great city, all of these things are important.

They're all connected. You can't just isolate them. And uh so these are not any order of importance but they're one is the economic development that we've talked about uh with why we needed the uh innovation park because we're going to need it for bringing in jobs and by doing that it's going to help keep our taxes down by broadening our tax base.

So economic development is going to be very important. um cutting taxes and making our city more affordable which is ties in with the affordable housing and to um what I say include yes include include affordable housing. So we need to make it as affordable as we can but keeping the quality of life that we have. Uh quality education that's um pre preK uh through higher ed. Um another place that they get education is

through child care and child care is part of it making affordability. people are having fewer children because the cost and availability of child care and it's keeping also people from going into the workforce because they don't have someone to take care of their children.

So ch child care has gotten extremely expensive and it's really necessary. Uh, I'd like to see us get a new Princess Anne High School. Um, and more votech opportunities.

Uh, public safety and our employees always important. We want the the best employees and we want them to make sure they're well compensated and that they have the good, very good equipment that that they need to do the job and pursue Lita and tourism.

Tourism is very important.

leg of our economic stool and it keeps helps keep our taxes low. We want welcoming familyfriendly and we want act activity options and want to be a very inviting beach places that people want to go that's clean things to do and people say I want to go back there next year.

Okay, thank you. That's all very great stuff. A couple of mine just are redundant with a lot of things.

we're talking about communications in general. Uh but once again, you know, working in collaborative efforts with our uh federal and uh state partners, I think are going to be essential. And if I could just make a comment on, you know, the communication, I think a challenge that our communication department has or we have as a city is that, you know, through generations, everybody's got different ways of

communicating. Uh, you know, uh, you know, uh, the senior the silver tsunami like myself communicate a lot uh, you know, different than the Gen Z's in terms of trying to get out the information you you know that's needed.

And if you look at the broad spectrum of information we get from legacy media, uh, social media, AI and everything, I'll tell you what, it's pretty confusing out there. Uh, but two other things I want to make and they were kind of touched on it. One, one is maintaining our quality of life. You know, we get kudos for being a great city to live in, one of the tops in, you

know, in the country. And the idea is not to sit on our laurels at all but to make sure that we maintain this. And we get this from various people. U our Navy loves us. And last year the um supreme commander of NATO came to uh my office and introduced himself and I made a comment about you know how many people from NATO live in Virginia Beach and he

says oh my goodness it came down to a quality of life and when people come here for four years they want your good schools. Uh so but once again you know we have to you know as we try to balance all of our CIP needs and everything you know we have to you know uh people expect and deserve the quality of life and the final other thing I'm bringing

up is the thing about u you know what Monica was talking before you know with the hope initiative helping our people to excel. One of our strong points of Virginia Beach is that we're considered the most caring community. And what a lot of things what a lot of people said here is making sure that people that need help, that need mental health, uh that need physical health, that need

mentoring, that need uh people getting into, you know, jobs and things of that nature so they can have a sustainable future. Uh but once again I you know I think the quality of life and at the same time helping our people excel give them the pathway to success and I think that uh we we do that very well. We're going to do it better and that's what defines us as Virginia Beach.

Thank you. Um I as we as you all were talking I started grouping some things.

We'll come back to the grouping, but I just want to kind of recap how I've grouped it and then open it up for you all to ask a few questions of each other in case you're not quite sure what someone meant when they were sharing one of their priorities. So, there were several comments about economic development, workforce development, and jobs and economic mobility. So um attracting young talent and new bas uh

businesses um some of the education comments I think overlap with K12 education right now I've got them separate that's how I was hearing it but I definitely heard overlap so over here we've got several economic development jobs workforce development attracting businesses and just since I just said education there were several comments about maintaining that highquality education.

Um, several comments about low taxes, reducing the tax burden, um, and tying that to making Virginia Beach affordable.

Um, I'll just tie the affordability then here. There were several specifically about affordable housing.

um and focusing there and then some um tying the the conversation about affordable housing to homelessness.

Um public safety what came up from a lot of people slightly different definitions or emphasis about public safety but broad public safety interest.

um activities for youth, sports tourism, youth sports, recreation center, also a senior center. I'm including seniors and youth, like serving the ends of the spectrum of um of your constituents.

Um completing the implementation for recreation and preservation of the ITA and land use issues seem related in my mind if I'm trying to group things.

infrastructure, improving your infrastructure, continue progress on roads and your CIP backlog, several comments about flooding and flood protection, environmental appreciation and protecting our coastal environment.

Mentioned affordable housing here. Um, a few comments about transportation, um, internal transportation, neighborhood traffic safety. So, different um, comments there. um tourism being a welcoming fan familyfriendly place. There were other mentions of tourism, but this was the only one that said that only. So, it came up more than once even though there's only one um there uh trust and competence of our

citizens and communication with our citizens about what we're doing and the cost of business. talked about education and then several about um maintaining s city services, reviewing our services to make sure we're meeting our needs, quality of life, food pantry, um unfunded mandates and improving communication with Richmond. I'm going to put sort of as a tangent to tax burden.

Um anything and the aging population in infrastructure I think can go there. So that's maybe looks like a mess but starting you had a lot of uh similarities in what you were talking about. Any questions of each other of what what you meant by different any questions or comments about you know what we're doing here? I think there's a lot of alignment here and you know once again I think that comes from our

working relationship that we have. Any comments at all?

Good job.

Okay, I'm going to actually let you take a quick break um to let lunch out and we'll be back in 10 minutes.

So people want that bread pudding again.

Okay.

So it's a short break. It's a 10-minute break. We'll be back at 128.

Heat. Heat.

Heat. Hey, Heat.

Heat. Heat.

Heat. Heat.

Hey, hey hey.

Don't be

keep talking about your priorities.

Um, pre-break I had already started grouping them. We consulted with staff a little trying to group these a little more um knowing that what you do today is a draft. It's not a final vote, but it's you're expressing agreement with the direction that you want staff to start building out the 24month focused action plan. Um, I'm I am going to have you put some dots up, but before we do that, I

um I'll tell you first of all, you're getting six dots total. Right now, I've got 12 y 13 big yellow circles. So, the big yellow circles are the kind of uh clusters of ideas. So, want to before I ask you to put some dots up to show what what your individual and collective priorities are leaning toward to make sure we're comfortable with these groupings. There's some things where you

you all talked about things that overlap and connect. So um starting over here again economic development and jobs and workforce development as a um as a potential priority area.

tax govern tax and government affordability, including, you know, uh, paying attention to the level of taxes, as well as looking at the services we provide to make sure we're providing services that our residents need and at a cost that is affordable. and paying attention to the state and federal unfunded mandates all categorized here.

Public safety, again, there's lots that you mentioned about public safety. Once we do our dots, we'll dig into what that looks like for each of you.

We regrouped several things into services based on the changing demographics. You you saw the great presentation last week and the recap this week of the changing demographics.

So things for youth s um things for our seniors and overall um quality of life for our residents um maintaining the quality of life providing the different um services that our folks need. Helping our people excel all based in these services based on the demographics investing in our infrastructure.

Um several ideas related to infrastructure, addressing flooding and the environment, affordable housing. Um and tied to affordable housing is the homelessness.

Um several mobility, transit, transportation, and trails as a broad category, tourism, resident engagement and relations. And I can see this, you know, building off of serving based on demographics. What are our residents asking for? Um, how do we continue to engage and relate with our residents to increase trust, education, and then I wasn't sure whether or not to combine some of the land use and ITA

um, uh, decisions and moving forward. So you completing the recreation and preservation of the ITA related to land use but might be a different category. So looking at kind of these groupings what are um what are some questions concerns comments you have Councilman Remick.

Thank you Julie. I was just ask council if you would consider putting the tourism because right now it's kind of lonely up there. It's really really important to our city, the four legs to our economy and our city. Tourism really is the top. We could put tourism over with economic development, jobs and workforce because you know we only had five categories a lot of but that's really important and I it was

not one of mine but it was really kind of meant in mine with economic development. Thank you.

That since I group that it makes sense to me.

I think that would be okay. Anybody object? No, I was going to say I would support like to me it almost feels like part of our infrastructure. I know a lot of people wouldn't look at it that way, but I was thinking the boardwalk, all the stuff that goes with it when I was talking about that, you know. Could I mention this that coming out of co we were able to get together with a lot

of folks and get the beaches open when a lot of beaches weren't open. And I think they did some economic impact analysis over the couple years after that. And I think there was something a figure I remember that the econ economic impact after the first year of co was something like $3.6 billion of economic that saved $1,700 on every uh homeowner's insurance. So I think you know that underscores your Yeah.

on the real estate taxes.

Yeah. Real estate.

Council Meer Cummings.

Okay. I just want a question for clarification.

Are we supposed to be looking at this from a baseline or from what do we need to concentrate on taking to the next level or improving? Because if you're looking at it from a baseline, I would say obviously to me public safety and education would be one and 1A. But I think we have awesome public safety and I think we have incredible schools and I think that there are other things we

need to try to bring to the next level versus trying to bring you elevate those that are already at a high level. So which how are we supposed to be looking at this?

Feel free.

Uh, Council Member Cummings, I'm excited about that question and I think that matters. I think we will actually flesh it out a lot in the next section when Julie um looks at what does success look like over the next 24 months. I think I said it last time because council member Belucci had a similar question. At the end of the day, we have a lot of things that we gave you all. I'm not sure we

accomplished anything. I don't know if you remember that comment that you made, but my uh response to that then is the same as now. Whatever ends up in the focus action plan, they all won't get the same level of attention, right?

It'll depend on how much progress you want to see when we're here 24 months from today. So for education, you might say success looks like us maintaining that or in addition to progress on a Princeton high school. But for one of these other categories, you might have something more ambitious of what success looks like. Uh so when we get to that next section, that's where we're really

we're listening to you all now and taking notes. But once we get to the section of what does success looks like look like, that's when we can tither out like how much effort you want for a particular goal. One might be maintaining, the other might be something we're not doing at all and you want us to bring you something new, something innovative. So yeah, I would say that's where we're going to get to that.

Okay Josh.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um, just under the affordability and and tax bucket. Um, I know we we've talked for several years around the table about um the real estate tax and and um and we've also talked about other taxes that we have that we impose on our citizens that aren't necessarily the aren't the real estate tax. But when we when we talk about cutting taxes, um I know there's a lot of focus on the real

estate tax and rightly so because that's what most people pay. But um I I I would just renew the call that we, you know, look for other tax revenues um that that if we were to cut them, they impact families and single mothers and people who might not own real estate. Um and and a lot of the people, you know, some people that own real estate, they own residential and commercial real estate.

So they're seeing the break twice. Um, and earlier this year there was some uh there was a CCSR from the manager about tax diversification in general and included in that was a blue ribbon task force from back in 2007 um under uh I guess it was former council Councilman Branch's leadership but it was a blue ribbon task force for revenues and expenditures and it was done in ' 07 um

and they did a lot of work um but it's almost 20 years old so um I said that there's some work being done obviously right now with the process improvement steering committee looking at ways where we can be more efficient but um I just hadn't even thought about this until now and I'd like to share with you council member Cummings um and maybe have the piss group look into look into this and

maybe we need to do this again and look at our revenue and expenditures a little bit more holistically.

Thank you. Other questions for clarification or about how we've grouped things?

I think you did a great job and I think the council did a great job bringing up some incredibly good stuff.

Great. Um and a whole lot of help from staff that you have to be clear.

Um we are gonna ask you to now use dots to show where your highest priorities are.

Yep. We took those sheets away on purpose and we want it.

We have limited options on this one.

Yes. So, you have six total dots in front of you. Your green dots, you have uh I believe three green dots or sorry, backwards. You have one green dot.

That's your most important item. That's worth three points.

You have two yellow dots. Those are worth two points each. And you have three blue dots worth one point each.

If you want, you can put all your dots on. We're going to put our dots on the yellow circles. You could put all your dots on one yellow circle. It's your choice how you want to push your votes.

You can spread them out. So the green dot is worth the most. yellow dots middle and blue dots are worth one point. Questions about what you're doing and then you connect the dots. There you go.

And then we'll connect the dots.

So um take your time to come up um and decide where you want to allocate your dots.

It's up on the screen so you remember which dots are worth most. and we'll see get a sense from council where your collective priorities are.

Um, I'll let you all come as you're ready.

Go ahead up. Get it started.

Okay, let's begin to reconvene.

Thank you for dotting.

We're we're tallying up the totals. So, we um I'll give you totals in a second, but economic development, jobs, workforce development had one, two, three, four, five, six green dots.

One, two, three, four, five, six green dots.

Okay. One blue and two yellows.

One, two, three, four, five, six green, one blue and two yellow.

You love me yellow.

This could be a long That's blue.

Hey, get Lynon Ramirez to count him. He's on the show.

Call on the auditor.

All right.

Um, do you have your totals are working?

Okay, let's just confirm that we've got the right counts there. On tax and government affordability and revenue diversification, we have one green, we have three yellows and two blues.

Public safety, one green, four yellows and two blues.

Services based on dem demographics, one yellow, one blue. Invest in infrastructure, one yellow, three blues.

Flooding and environment, two yellows, seven blues.

Affordable housing, two greens, four yellows.

Five blues.

Mobility transit transit transportation, trails, three yellows, three blues.

Resident engagement, three blues.

Education, four blues. Land use, one blue. ITA, one green, one yellow.

So when we do our math,

ITA was one green, one yellow.

So economic development when you add up the points that's 23.

Next is housing.

When you add up your weighted points, that's 19.

Then safety is 13.

And then we've got flooding and environment at 11 and tax government affordability revenue dis uh diversification also at 11.

Then next would be mobility at nine and then infrastructure at five, ITA at five and education at four and let's see I'll just no longer in order land use is at one resident engagement is three anything else missing services services based on demographics is three so We're missing three with the math.

Everyone use all their dots.

You can tell who the CPA in the crowd is.

Just double check.

So, can you roll it out from top to bottom?

Yeah. So top to bottom, economic development, jobs, workforce development came out on top.

And that includes tourism.

And that includes tourism. Yes.

Affordable housing, including homelessness, is the second.

And then public safety was third.

tied for fourth was flooding in the environment and tax and government affordability and revenue diversification.

So tied for fourth that counts fourth and fifth. Then mobility, transit, transportation trails ITA, education.

I think then there was a four somewhere, wasn't there?

No. All right. So then invest in infrastructure services, resident engagement, land use.

What was public safety?

public safety um was third overall with 13 points.

So I'll start with the highest priorities. Economic development, affordable housing, public safety, government affordability, and flooding and environment.

If you look at those as the five top priorities, how is that feeling? That feels like what a lot of you were talking about.

Yeah, I think we've been talking about that for quite some time now. Uh but once again, the priorities do remain the priorities.

the things that are lower um had lower expressions of agreement, fewer dots on them.

Do you have some concerns about where those are falling out?

Yeah, Josh. Um just a concern in general is that the public doesn't misinterpret um you know a lesser number of a dot for you know for for you know and translate that into we don't care about those things. Um especially when something like education or um you know other other things up there uh and resident engagement are coming in at lower. um it would obviously be assumed that we would

do a lot of resident engagement around all of these things that are of importance. So um anyway, just wanted to say that out loud. And Josh, if you don't mind me saying, I think when it comes to education, uh you know, there is a separate entity. You know, they do have a a superintendent, they got a school board, they make their own budget and everything. And you know, our priority is you make sure they have the

funding for it. But in terms of the actual they set their own priorities.

Were you going to say something? Nope.

Agree. All right.

Um, so where we want to go next is fleshing out what success looks like in particular for the areas that have higher higher levels of support even though all of the areas are important.

So um I want to start then with economic development and jobs and workforce development and tourism.

Um, if you're thinking it's 24 months from now or maybe even 12 months from now, what would you like to see the city moving forward in the next 12 to 24 months? How would you know? How would staff know that they're meeting your expectations in um moving economic development, jobs, workforce development, tourism forward?

Michael.

Well, one of the things that we need is a place to put those expanding uh businesses and retain the ones that we have here and answer the call. For example, many of our economic development leads come through the governor's office through the work that they're doing. And when that call comes to Virginia Beach, we need to be able to answer that call and have um sites, a diversity of sites. And I'm not talking

specifically in reference to the conversation we had this morning, but inclusive of that. But we need to have um we need to have a location and we need to be ready to um accept those opportunities as they come our way, especially for the ones that make sense that are cohesive with our economic development strategy. I think that's really important. Um I think continuing to develop a workforce. The vice mayor

mentioned um tech career and technical education and that is an important component to um to our uh economic development, jobs and prosperity. And then finally, I would say that um something that council member Ralph said this morning was about what does economic development look like into the future and we have to perform that analysis for Virginia Beach. One of the ways that people talk about it is an

emerging creative class. Um, which is we have we know we have so many creative and and innovative people here in our community and yet I think we could find ways to foster that creative um energy in ways that uh translate to more um economic opportunity in Virginia Beach and I'd like to see us move in that direction.

Thank you. Michael Cash, quickly I'll be quick. Um this is a way where when it we talk about economic development, we talk about workforce development. This is where I I think city council and the school board uh when it comes to vote, this is where I think we need to take a more um collaboration where we we work together.

Uh because it's true um the school has its own um leadership board, you name it. But but we are lacking in certification jobs.

And so my push is for us to start in middle school and high school. And so they're um they are job ready. Just like we think of buildings and being shovel ready, um we want to make sure that our our elite students are job ready.

You know, thank you. Um you know, a couple years ago, a group of mayors and a group of business folks went to Germany uh to look at their internship and apprenticeship programs. And one of the things we have to do when I mentioned before about communicating with uh Richmond, you know, we have to change the OSHA laws and a few other work, you know, work rules uh that are imposed on us which prevent uh

sophomores and juniors from actually starting to get engaged. But I think that might be, you know, something that we seriously have to look at. Stacy and then work.

Yes. Uh just uh one metric that we should be looking at is uh the increase in the commercial tax base over year to year.

So use that as a way to measure success.

Correct.

Y thank you. That's a great idea. It's a great metric right off the the bat. So ear earlier this morning I was going to read this from our department of economic development the website uh of our department of economic development which is charged with economic development and bringing jobs and workforce. So these are key industries which are know I think everyone will recognize these industries very well.

Advanced manufacturing, bio and life sciences, defense, IT and cyber, maritime and logistics, offshore wind, office and retail. Of course the last one is kind of a niche and not necessarily an industry. But I think we already have very well I think as a city pursued and expanded our tax base and our economic development. We can can do better. It's all about product whether it's for industrial or office or retail.

Um so I do like the the commercial tax base metric of giving getting it from 14 to go to 15 or 16% much less 20. But that's a good metric. Um, but this is another metric that we don't necessarily need to use, but keep in mind that three out of every four new jobs is created by existing businesses. And we have a great uh ledger of those existing businesses that are in a lot of these industries.

So, let's pay attention to our own.

Thank you.

Okay Josh.

Just for clarification, Julie, this is that you're asking for things that staff could be working on for the next two years that would help achieve in this economic development realm, right?

Yeah. And to get a sense of how far and how fast they need to work.

Okay. Um so, and I've talked to a couple council members about this, but um not everybody. And uh so I'm just gonna I'll lay it out there as an idea. Back in 2001 and then there was an update in 2014. We came up with a policy guidelines for evaluation of investment partnerships for economic development.

Um it's basically our public private partnership policy and how and when we you know make incentives available for um people when they when businesses come alongside the public sector. Um that policy is almost 10 years old, the last update and still references light rail um the vision to action community coalition that doesn't exist anymore, plans that are out of date. Um and applies to um developments that are $30

million plus. Um what's missing are all the priorities that we just talked about. So like um environmental protection, uh affordable housing, promoting um tree canopy open space, um redevelopment versus new development. Um a lot of those projects aren't necessarily $30 million plus projects. They're probably, you know, 15 to 30 or whatever it is.

So, um I think it would behoove us to update the I mean because I think in order to see the things that we want to see, we got to provide a road map or a PL, you know, a path for people and incentives for people to do what we'd like to see. So, if we can maybe redo this policy um in a in a today's time frame and priorities sense, um I think

that would be really good. And alongside of that, um, in 2017, Patty Phillips, the former budget director, put together a slide deck that evaluated every single public private partnership because P3s, they get, you know, I mean, each of them are different and um, sometimes, you know, the public doesn't fully understand um, and and they're complicated. So, um, and they involve different things. Operation Smile, for

example, just involved land, whereas Town Center involved a TIFF SSD framework. And um but this slide deck told the story, the ROI of every single public private we've had to including Town Center, Linhaven Mall, um the amphitheater, Sports Plex, um Operation Smile, and we've done a lot of things since 2017, including the Cavalier, the sports complex across the street. So, I think if we're if we're going to be

investing or potentially investing public dollars in any of these priorities, I think we need to make sure to tell the story of well, they've been success stories in these areas. These areas, they've been maybe not as much financial successes, but they've also had community benefits alongside them.

And I'm thinking like the recreation P3s. Um, so, so anyway, I would love to see a little bit of that where we're updating our incentive structure to align with current policy priorities.

Okay. Worth and then Rosemary.

We're trying to be a little bit more specific, which I don't know if that's what you're looking for or not, but um the council just gave the green light for Rudy Park last week. Let's get moving on that because that's good for that's good for business. It's good for tourism, it's good for our families, and hopefully it's one of the things that'll help attract more young families here.

So, get moving get moving on that. We need to start looking for the acquisition of land for to encourage businesses to come here. They've got to have a place to land. They can't we can't suspend them in the sky, unfortunately.

Uh I really think we need to an economic development director.

We need a director for economic development. We that is vacant right now. And Amanda does a great job, but she's got a lot of other things to do.

And we really appreciate Amanda. Uh so we need a plan for for those kind of things. And we we still have seven lots left over in Corporate Landing that we can we can handle, but uh Central Beach District, we now have a master plan for that and we've got some things moving forward on that. So I I really think we need a financial plan for the Central Beach District of

how we're going to pay for it. Uh we got a plan but without funds it's not going to happen. So those are a few specifics.

Okay. Worth.

Thank you. Rosemary or Vice Mayor Wilson just stated what I was going to say and that is economic development director for sure and hopefully maybe a director that has some resort experience as well because that is a really important part of our our city and our economy. That thanks for pointing out. Sports tourism also I'd like to add because that's a specific area of economic development that we

talked about earlier this morning.

Thanks.

Thank you, Millia.

Oops.

Yes, I agree with all that Councilman uh Mansion Remick as well as Councilwoman Wilson because we do need a economic development person and I know we're running out of land, but we have many buildings around that can be repurposed to fit some of the businesses coming in.

That's one thing you could look at instead of trying to have them have a new piece of land to build on. There's certain properties that could happen.

Also, I serve on the military economic development advisory um committee and they mentioned one of the ladies mentioned how at age 38 some of the veterans are finished.

They're out and they're looking. So that's one area, you know, we could capitalize on getting them job ready to help because they already come with certain experiential experiences and so forth. So that would cut the whole process of us having to train them completely. So that's one bucket of group we should look at. and also not just the K through 12, but we have TCC, we have Virginia Wesley, we have a

couple of other smaller um higher ed that we can partner with to cover some of what we need because especially where Councilman Remick talked about the jobs, advanced manufacturing, you mentioned biochemistry and a lot of things are happening in that area that our partners at the higher ed can help you know repurpose in some way get this population. So then they will come because some of them already have some

family and looking for where they could be and still earn enough uh to cover everything.

Thank you.

Okay. Now let me say that let's put it this way. Let's be honest. uh economic development is the focal point and lynchpin to make all the other yellow circles go.

If we're going to move forward, we have to come up with new revenue streams. Uh because once again the revenue streams we have now are not going to be sustainable in the future especially with our infrastructure storm water needs you know keeping up with uh you know uh public safety and everything.

But the point is though, you know, we need that e economic stimulus that will take care of our aging infrastructure and aging population that would help us with you know tax abatement and you know help for people that would help with affordable housing help you know once again we were really strained in our last budget trying to find money for CIPs because we just didn't have you know the money in the kitty

And I think if we walk away from here today and then once again, you know, as Amelia were saying, repurpose, uh, you know, Kemp's River Shopping Center and, uh, some of the other ones, uh, you know, that are on the radar right now.

But the thing is, you know, we have to grow, but we have to grow smartly. Um, and I I I concur with Worth and Stacy that we need more commercial properties on, you know, to help out and that would give also relief to the residential folks. But, you know, without a vigorous economic development plan. Uh, but the other thing is to get around affordable housing and things of that nature is

bring in the higher paying jobs that would, you know, would help help sustain them too. But once again I think that an economic strategy of you know growing the revenue streams you know should be a very focal point so we can do everything else. Amelia um that reminded me for example Mocha when we talk about the arts repurposing that with other cultural areas that can generate funds because we do have a very

creative uh community across the city.

And the other thing that I mentioned is to do with mobility. This morning I heard on I think could have been CNN that cars are going to now start around 50,000 with what all that's needed and the lack of the steel that we need because we're going through the tariff and so forth. But people have to leave their cars home.

What are we going to do about mobility to get them where they need to go? So, we've got to look at that. If you don't have the funds to buy these new fancy cars or, you know, repair, how are we going to attempt on transportation that is very important. Thank you.

Okay. Anyone else at this point? No, I I tell you what, that was a good exercise.

Patrick, do you have anything?

Yeah. So, Mr. Mayor, members of council, the big thing I think with economic development and and we've talked about it before is that because of all the increases, the inflationary increases associated with the CIP, we're in a state now where it doesn't pay for itself, right? You know, so when we bring in a new business, the road improvement, the utility improvement, the storm water improvement necessary

doesn't cover the cost in terms of direct revenue. So, it's one of those things that if we enter into it, we need to have an honest conversation as a staff and body about finding the funds to pay for the CIP upgrades. And I think what we need to do is we need to throttle into redevelopment while we're throttling out of green field development because we're getting to a place where we're running out of land,

right? But redevelopment is heck of a lot more expensive than green field development, right? So, we're going to also need to develop funding strategies for the types of patient incentives that are needed to spur repurposing and repritorizing of old properties, right?

And even possibly acquiring some of these properties. And Virginia Beach, we're blessed to be by this beach and we have a great sustainable um real estate market. But what that means is that we don't have land that are like in a Portmith or Cincinnati or NOFK that are below market values, right? We don't really have places that are significantly cheap land that we can get. We don't got a lot of delinquent

tax properties as well. So what that means is that for us to acquire land for repurposing, we're buying it literally at market value at time or if we're not buying land, we need to find out those incentives and create the the financial tools to do that. So we need to honestly be thinking about the fact how are we going to do that, right? If we're in and does we're never in an appetite where

we're interested in raising tax revenues, right? This could be approached in a myriad of ways. It could be that we're looking at things such as more repurposing of dedications to kind of create the sources that we need to build out these CIPs for the roads andor creating the tools that we need, you know. So, those are some of the things that we got to be mindful of is that by itself it doesn't pay for itself. And

that's not the that's not to say you don't do economic development because in addition to direct revenues, there's the business to the b businessto business investments. There's the fact that we have businesses that are looking to expand in Virginia Beach, but they can't expand at Virginia Beach. So, they're thinking about going elsewhere, right?

Which would then cause a decaying factor, which would just harm us overall from a tax base standpoint. So even if we're not getting direct revenue to cover it, we still got to be in there.

But we just got to be mindful that there's a significant dollar associated with expanding out innovation park and or also even thinking about stepping into the redevelopment game. And if the path we go down is to further explore this and this becomes one of your priorities, we can give you options to consider and how we can pay for that and address that. But it's going to require

us to be bold as staff. But you ought to be bold in your policy decision- making as well if it's a priority of yours.

Well said.

Okay, that was great stuff.

All right, I want to do the same conversation about affordable housing and homelessness.

Thinking for the next 12 to 24 months, what would your expectations of staff be? What would success look like if you continue to make progress there? what's realistic that you'd like to see moving forward in the next 12 to 24 months?

Yep. Josh, just one thing that comes to mind is um I know we just passed and and created the attainable housing program. um which goes after um a a gap I guess funding gap like by by creating by by creating less real estate taxes due for the for the person who's who's doing the development. that I've heard from folks who are looking at this and I know we're drafting the policy, but um that it's not quite

enough um to get over the hump. And um I know that there are other states that that have been um you know I I guess ahead on this issue and they're doing things like um tap fees and expedited permitting and other kind of tools in the box that that help around the edges that aren't necessarily just real estate taxes. Um waving permit fees, things like that. Um, and I and I'm sensitive

on that issue because I know it creates a workload for staff because if we're asking people to expedite things, that means they're doing that instead of something else. So, we need to be mindful on the on the resourcing side of the house. But, um, just looking at other states to see what they've done that we could do.

Stacy, I think again in addressing this affordable housing issue, like many uh municipalities across the country, we have an inventory problem and uh we had a presentation last week um where um Deputy City Manager Kroski brought in this fantastic gentleman who gave us a uh whole presentation about our demographics and what we were needing in the city and but given his North Carolina education, he wasn't able to

answer the the most important question was I knew we would go there eventually.

You know, how many units do we need? And we don't know, but it's in the thousands. We need thousands and thousands of additional units of housing and it all can't be or it all shouldn't be just multifamily housing. We need to offer some uh housing that is single family homes that are affordable for our school teachers and our um emergency service personnel and our city employees. Um, so getting more units online

is a to me a key metric in in judging success.

And what do you um see as the city's role in getting more units online?

One, we need to make it easier for development to occur. Uh, two, we need to identify uh more places. Again, it's a land use issue. We need to make more land available.

And you know the tradeoff is we have places now that are shopping centers or uh being used for commercial uses or other types of uses that uh we we need to convert to residential because we can't put residential in a lot of our remaining land. So, we need to make a trade-off between uh shopping centers and and um you other types of u commercial uses where they can be residential if we allowed it to be and

move move more of our commercial and light industrial to other places that aren't able to accommodate housing.

Thank you.

Okay, we're going to go Worth and Hutch.

Thanks. Because it's good. I'll go right after Councilman Member Cummings because it's the same type it's it's inventory uh that's needed out there uh both for rent but also for sale and I'll come back to for sale in a minute but we have as a council have approved of a lot of projects for the private sector because affordable housing really is mostly done by the private sector here and across

the country a lot of it though is in multif family for rent so I think we should encourage more for sale and to be built by the private sector. Uh it can't be our money, but it could be density, could be uh reuse of existing um land.

But we do have a Virginia Beach Community Development Corporation, which is a 501c separate entity that we did uh a week ago grant uh resoning and and earlier this year gave uh for 60 new units with in conjunction with NAMI. So that's good. That's 60 units. it's going to be done in, you know, first singles and doubles and triples and not in home runs, affordable housing. Um, I want to

come back to also homelessness in a minute because our housing and um neighborhood um preservation team, Ruthie Hill, and they did two studies.

One is a housing study that I think may have given us some metrics for affordable housing, what's needed for the inventory, or we need to go back and check with them on that. As well as they did a pretty thorough exhaustive study on homelessness, and I believe they said we were meeting the needs. Now, at the same time, I think they said we were 100 to 200 beds short. So, I would I'd say

we need to go back yes to the housing study both for affordable housing and homelessness.

There was I think that was one other thing I was going to say, but that's it's not easy. This is a very very difficult topic. Um, we can't lower interest rates. I think that's the cause for our crisis at at this point. But, um homelessness is also very important all across the city. And I think we're doing taking good steps, but we just need to keep on keep on this. Thank you.

Okay. Hutchim Rosemary.

So, um, not to turn your thing a little upside down here, but for me, uh, some of this is, um, I don't want to say it's not not warranted. I'm not trying to say that, but we have the planning director over there. We have, you know, uh, the housing, we have the deputy city manager, we have the city manager. Um, I looked at it when I was the fire chief

that you just give me the stuff and let me do it. You know what I mean? Um, I had a team of nine that were incredible.

I I would I would trust that they are going to bring back to us what the metrics are. I know we have to give general uh general direction, but I've said it a hundred times that we're here to help clear hurdles and try to stay at that upper level. And I think that's um we are getting dangerously close to getting into mechanics in my mind, at least when I was in charge. That's how I

felt. Um so I just I just caution us for that. I think what we're saying is all good stuff, but I don't I don't think a lot of it would be really new to the folks that are running this dayto-day.

Um so bringing us that if there's stuff that we see that we're missing, we have subject matter experts in the area. Of course, I want to hear what everybody has to say. And then obviously on the um I've already stated working with developers figuring out that midlevel.

What do we got to do? That to me is like where there's a hurdle, right? We've got to help figure that out. And then the homelessness like like Councilman Worth said, Director Hill has pointed out how many beds she needs and the personnel she needs to make that happen. And uh I think that is a hurdle that we have to help with, not that

to market rate. And if you if that happens, all the work that you do and all the incentives that you do for workforce housing is going to be lost.

So, whatever we do for something, especially things that we're offering incentives for, we've got to make sure that they stay in place from homeowner to homeowner. And otherwise, you're doing this all for not because the next person could say, "Oh, I can sell this at market rate." You know, maybe we bought it for 200,000, now we can sell it for 400,000. So, it's just a a word of caution.

Yeah. Thank you, Amelia.

Um, we also want to credit it. Ruth with that whole which we got the idea I think from Richmond but using the incentive performance grant. It's so nice. I was able to mention were able to mention yesterday that 180 units all affordable are coming up right off of the Simon outlet along Burton station. And one other thing we could do is we have to hold sometimes the developers feet to the

fire. For example, we have 345 units coming up right off of uh Baker Road.

Some of you will know where the old sports complex that was not finished and I deferred it because I said we need a certain percentage like how we have at Cypress Point that would be affordable.

If you don't ask for it, it doesn't happen. They can take it back to the drawing board. So September 16 they're going to come back but we need to put some efforts on that is not just to do with profits but we also definitely that is second affordable housing. So we need to really emphasize and tell our developers this is what we need. We cannot go so much vertical because we

don't have the land, but we can go I mean we can go vertical instead of horizontal to increase and have people buy those just like condos.

So they're not apartments but like condominiums and they feel a sense of ownership even though they're stack that way. Thank you.

Yeah. Then Michael, thank you mayor. Um, one aspect of this that I am by no means an expert in, but that I want to raise to this conversation is um, eviction reduction.

And Councilman Hutches and I particularly have been speaking a lot with four kids who was an advocate in this area and and recognized regional leader. And in the course of those conversations, it was just think it was we explored deeper the impact that evictions have on families and the trauma that is caused to a family who experiences that um often more than once in their life in

their lifetimes um once you fall into that cycle. But then I was also contemplating some of the other challenges that a municipality faces when an eviction occurs, such as what we have in certain neighborhoods in the district that I serve. Um issues with waste management, for example, that's related to that. Um, and that's just one of many um, examples of the significant and material and immaterial

or I should say less tangible impacts that an eviction can have. And so as we're talking about affordable housing and homelessness, um I'm in no way making a broad criticism of the city's strategy in eviction reduction, but I because I don't know every aspect of it, but I do think we need to keep that as um at the front of the conversation because if you can stop someone um on on

the upstream of that, it's going to not only have financial savings, but it will save the trauma that's associated with that um really challenging activity.

Okay, let me uh you know say this. I think what it really comes down to my friends is that we have to be honest and have the conversation about the barriers to success that we're that we are facing.

And uh you know that being said the answers are not easy. You know let me put it this way. um kind of the third rail of conversation about one of the problems is the regulatory costs that go into any house. I am told by um some folks, you know, with the real estate uh industry that uh Wells Fargo um mortgage yeah says there's usually around a $93,000 regulatory uh cost that goes in

basically to a new average house. So if you buy a piece of land for 100 $150,000, you're talking about a quarter million dollars before the first nail goes in the first B. And then once again, you know, once again, we have to find that balance because we made a commitment to storm water. Uh and then we also have, you know, the costs that go in. I remember uh I think there was a an

apartment complex near Northampton a couple years ago uh where the u you know the developer said that I think the rents for a studio were 1,500 a month mostly because of all the storm water precautions and delays and things that they had. So, you know, finding the balance for that and the regulatory red tape, you know, a number of years ago, uh, Steve Lawson, you has a a stellar

reputation of being affordable housing.

He owns Chartway and a, you know, a lot of apartment complexes that are good.

They built a facility on, I think it was Mediterranean and 19th, which included not only affordable housing, but, you know, housing for the disabled. And you know, hey, that is some of the prime real estate in the city there. But once we made the commitment, but from what I understand, I think it was a couple years getting through all the red tape and regulatory uh you know, things you know that are necessary.

And uh but the thing is uh you know I just think we have to be I think we really have to when we're talking about a public education about why we make the decisions we do because when we put density housing into a neighborhood, you know, the neighborhoods come out and have concerns and things about that nature. Um, I was recently at an event at a senior facility that's relatively

new on um, Virginia Beach Boulevard in District 4, the Arbor. Now, I I just saw the facade from the beginning and I drove by it a number of times. I was not aware that it's 150 units that really go out into the back and uh, you know, elderly live there. It's affordable. uh you know mixed race and everybody you have a community back there but but once again I think with the perceptions a lot

a lot of communities really show up and say oh that's a great idea but just don't put it here and I think you know everybody lives on a house that may have been or work in a building that one time was farmland or something else and the thing is if we're going to create that new the economy that we need to bring in the businesses we need for the new revenues and to find the places where

people live and uh you know I can say back in the old Centerville days. um when you work with the community and educate the community. Uh we were able to put the Cascades and Infiniti on the corners of uh Len Haven and Centerville Turnpike and there were about 450 units combined there, but working with the public ahead of time, having a good neighbor policy, you know, bringing the neighbors to the table about uh you

know, what the traffic impacts are going to be and but now you have a situation where it Everybody's a neighbor there and I think that's what we have to do and it really comes down to an education about, you know, justifying the decisions that we make.

Mr. Manager, any questions about council's priorities around affordable housing and homelessness?

No.

Okay.

I'm going to um ask you to go to the third item and that was public safety.

Um, so public safety, you all talked about um a variety of things of what public safety means to you. Uh, and I I want to hear from you in the next 12 to 24 months. What are what are your priorities there? Um, just you remember what you say, but public safety about the employees about um equipment and technology. Lita is in there. Safe neighborhoods, the proliferation of shootings and um providing other things

for youth to do, public safety being more than just police, it's all of public safety. So council, if you're envisioning the next 12 to 24 months and you're giving staff guidance about what you expect them to be focusing on to um continue the emphasis on public safety, what what does that look like?

And I'm sorry, Patrick.

No, M. Mayor, I was just going to really ask for this one. Is is there anything in particular cuz like in general what I tend to hear from you all is that from all across from all the all hazards all the different department and public safety is that they're they're doing well and mostly maintain the status quo you know. So really what I would like to glean from this is that is this just a

an agreement or affirmation to continue or is there particular areas that you want us to kind of glean and hone in on Michael? Um well to speak directly to that I think it is for me generally continuation as you noted as you stated um but I would add to that of course Lita ideally we would have I mean I don't I don't know what that looks like exactly if you can break ground in 24 months. I

would ask you do you think we could break ground in 24 months on Lita? Um and then I got a couple other things.

Director Hansen, can you come and address that question?

If not, could we be close?

Do you think we could break ground on Lita in the ITA in 24 months?

And Michael, we do need a leader.

Need a leader.

I've been I heard that before.

Councilman, I think 24 months is pushing it. I think I think it's right on the cusp. Um, in truth, we have some preliminary work that we're trying to get done so we can get uh the design work done. I'm estimating the design work is going to take about 18 months probably. Um, I think 24 months is probably right about that part where we would be looking to break around. Yes,

sir. But I I I can't be 100%.

All right. Well, so we're within the window.

You're telling me there's a chance.

Thank you. Um, say it was a done deal.

The other The other thing is um we should we should talk about the workforce and in the workforce I mean um you know we just completed the market um salary survey and we also made adjustments based on the results of that survey. So I think continuing to monitor that is important.

U but we know that the workforce at the police department is down more substantially than it was the last time we met. um understanding the reasons that that condition exists uh I think progress would look toward closing that gap um particularly within the police department and um and also the sheriff's offices and then um I think the ultimate metric is the crime statistics um and although the statistics in

Virginia Beach are positive and we have a lot to be grateful for in that area then There are some other questions about crime statistics such as different constituencies don't report crimes with the same frequency that others do. Um sometimes crimes are under reportported certain categories of crimes that are not calculated by the FBI's standardization of crime reporting statistics. So I don't know that we can

rely fully on the crime statistics, but they are a great window and metric and um and it's been a positive one for us.

So that's just something to continue to monitor. Thank you, Rosemary.

I agree with with Michael. I mean, this year we had a great budget where we did a whole lot with public safety and I'm really I think all of us are are proud of that.

Um on your computer or on your table? Yeah.

I'm I'm just wondering and I'm I'm definitely not trying to micromanage or anything, but if there's any way we could look at the time frame it takes to get from submitting an application to actually becoming a police officer, firefighter, if there's anything that can be done so it's more of an express route. I mean, I know a young man that's going through trying to become a police

officer. He does one step and he's got to wait several weeks and he does another step and weeks and does another step. If and some people while they're going through that application process, they can't afford it. They they need a job then. And so there's some way they could become interns or something in between while they're waiting to become a police officer.

You know, maybe that could help fill because I know we're 80 police officers short. There's some ways we could look at to sort of expedite some of it or uh make it easier for people to I'm not saying lessen the quality of who we're looking for. Absolutely not. But make it affordable for people who want to become an officer but they can't wait for that whole six-month process. If we can find

some stipens or uh some other work for them to do in the meantime, if we could possibly look at that. Thanks.

Okay, I do have one.

Um we started a program um Councilwoman Wilson and several others and it was approved by the staff for the parks after dark and now we're in the three sites. So I would like to see that you know continue because it's making a difference within these 24 months as we're doing um evaluating of each site. we should continue and I don't know if there are any other council members looking at a site speak now

Mr. Mayor um Dr. Ros, I'd like to add all three sites are going phenomenally, right?

I would I would say that I think we're to the point where we the sheriff's department and the police department couldn't accommodate a fourth location.

And the reason being is that parks after dark typically is situated around our peak season, you know, where we're pulling um bandwidth to help support the activities down at the oceanfront as well, right? So, you know, we're usually um doing parks after dark with a significant complement of sheriff deputies and our school resource officers tend to be leaving the schools as well. you know, in talking to the um

sheriff Rocky Hulcom and also Chief Nudigate, they kind of feel like this is um a good stretch for them to do three, you know, but if we were to go to four, I think they'll have a lot of concern about the capacity to do it well.

Okay. So, I think we should sustain what we how's that.

Thank you.

Good. You know, let me uh you know, just finish up here. I think the one point of pride I think we have as a council and as a management staff, we did answer the bell. We did hear the call. Uh now remember um a little over a year ago, Chief Travis came to us and said he was six 60, you know, bodies down and say, "Okay, we'll give you 30 this year,

we'll give you 30 next year." And uh we were proud to go to the graduation where they had two graduating classes, one of 20 and one of 30. So we did we did answer the bell on that one. Uh there was a call for uh increased money for cancer uh screening. We answered the bell on that one. Uh police requested a salary survey. We did it. We responded. We answered the bell on that one. I think

to Michael's point, I think the thing is, you know, let's keep this momentum going. And yes, I realize we are 80 police officers short, but when you talk about other mayors regionally, and if you talk to the mayors locally, um they are have five far more vacancies with far less population. You know, back in the day when people were talking about defunding the police, we went ahead and

funded them. And once again, uh the police will tell you that they are getting the support they need. They they're getting the equipment they need.

And uh believe me, I talk to everybody with a uniform anywhere I see them. Wawa or you know, McDonald's anywhere. And I can tell you based on my informal uh thing, you know, a a lot of the folks are happy working with the city right now for what I see and are grateful for what we have done for them. So, let's keep it going.

So, Mr. Mayor, I am in my head deciding I'm seeing a lot of you getting squirmy and thinking you might need another quick break. Um, or we can do a couple more and then take a break.

How many more do we need?

Um, I think I think the way the manager just framed the question is what we're going to be needing for the rest of them. Tell us keep it going or is there something to switch?

Are we okay going forward? Okay, let's keep going.

Because Mr. Mayor, I I kind of feel like with flooding and environmental, we probably need to have more of a conversation on tax and government affordability, but I think if flooding and environmental, my gut is kind of feels the same way that you all feel with public safety. You all understand the flood protection program went from 567 to 1.3. We're making some headways into it. you know, albeit we know we

have some challenges on the regulatory side in um district 2, Council Member Henley's district as well, but I think more or less council's just keep putting the pedal to the metal as it relates to those items, you know, but are there any particular items besides, you know, trying to knock out those permitting issues that we have in district 2 on those flood protection projects that you think we need to focus on?

Yeah Cash.

Thank you, Mayor. Um, mayor, I think for me from from just looking at sports tourism, youth sports tourism, um, and that to me is something that, um, that's a big revenue, um, driver for the city of Virginia Beach. I just want to let you guys know when it comes to traveling teams that come here to compete at the Sportslex, they generate lots of tax revenue, heads in bed, they are restaurants and uh I I for me

and that's services based on demographics.

Okay, we're on flood morning.

Yeah, sorry. flooding.

We're jumping. Sorry.

I mean, and it can flood when they're playing sports.

We're proud of Cash. He thinks ahead.

Hey, can I can I can I help him out real quick?

Yeah, go right ahead.

I want to go back to the uh public safety for a second. I did forget to say something, so I'm going to help you out here, buddy. All right. Um just the we do need to think about uh our apparatus across all aspects of our public safety where we're keeping them. The fleet management garage city garage there's a lot I've taken a couple of you by there.

I'm sorry I forgot to say it a minute ago. It's one of the underling things that I think um is a metric that we need to worry about. We have a lot a lot of rolling stock that takes a lot to keep up and and LJ knows it's a huge it's a huge job that we uh we just need to stay on top of. Thanks. Sorry about that.

You're welcome.

Okay. Oh, Josh.

Uh is this environment and flooding?

Okay. Environment and flooding for this has got to be somewhere in 20 minutes. So we need a break.

So uh three.

No. Yeah. So, the flood flooding, we've we've talked about environment um I I think I think is a separate and distinct thing and I I don't want to kind of, you know, give that broad strokes and um I I know we all found out um and we already knew and I and I already certainly already know and know better that trees are important to people in the city of Virginia Beach. um and and our tree

canopy in particular growing um enhancing and and preserving the the you know our the older trees, the hardwoods in particular. And and uh so as we go about our flooding projects, there's both environmental consequences and then also environmental benefits alongside of the things we're doing. I mean, we sent people back to the drawing board on Rudy Park and they came back and they

described 10 degrees cooler and lots of trees and shoreline protections and all those sorts of things. So, we need to be doing the same thing about our flood protection program projects. Um, and then we also need to be um, you know, the the urban forest management plan, the update that that just came out. Um, there's there's some lowhanging fruit in there and there are some policy recommendations.

Um, I I would love to see us working on that. Um, I'd love to work with you on that, Miss Huntley, uh, in particular.

Uh, and and the group that we spoke about before to to to help residents, I think, understand, I mean, if you get up on the top of the West End or a parking garage in town center or on the beach, you know, at the resort in a parking garage and you look out, we are a really green city. um you know, we've lost some ground certainly in in percentage tree

canopy, but um but we have resources to grow it and and I think that residents um need to be assured that it's something that's important to us and if it's important to us, then we need to talk about it and we need to um show show people instead of just tell them.

Okay, great. Anybody else?

Yep. Barbara, just a question. When you speak about the trees, we had quite a lot of money that we got uh for tree mitigation from the sea valve project, but we didn't know where we could plant those trees and that was one of the reasons we really needed an ITA plan so we could know where the right place would be.

Have we ever done anything to help resolve that or are we still sitting there with a million dollars in the bank waiting to know where we can spend it?

So, Council Member Henley, we'll reshare the plan that we shared with council on how we're um moving towards spending that money in multiple districts. I think we shared it with staff of council um probably a year ago or several months ago, but we'll reshare that information with city council again.

Well, I was hoping that the mitigation was going to happen at the place where the trees were taken down. Uh but anyway, uh that's one of the reasons we really needed to work on the ITA plan because we didn't know where to plant the trees until we knew what was going to happen where because you don't want to plant trees and then have to take them out. But I mean, if we we're

sitting there with the money in the bank and we just don't know where to spend it, but our folks really are uh concerned about their trees. They they love their trees in Virginia Beach and we want to make sure that we uh we're doing the right thing.

Okay. Thank you. You I think u a frustration everybody has whether it be this council or other people is you know especially in district two when we are when things are out of our control and trying to fix a problem. And the highlight of that I think is the NIMO project which is held up you know on infinatum far too long because of regulations uh federal regula regulatory agencies

and it's totally out of our control and I think that's a frustration uh Barbara has in her district. I know the people there. You we get the pictures when there's backups there. And this is a safety uh issue. But once again, hopefully um we can do something to try to expedite this. But I think it's a frustration in dealing with environmental issues. You know, we had a little wetlands in the middle of

Linhaven Parkway between Indian River and uh Centerville for decades and decades. And it took a long time to get it mitigated. And unfortunately, it was a couple fatal fires, fires with fatalities, and a couple folks that had slow response from EMS that we were finally able to get it done. But once again, I think that, you know, NIMO has to be a priority.

Okay. Thank you.

So, Mr. Mr. Mayor, I am going to say you guys need a break just to stretch for a second and then about five minutes.

I'm going to say 10, but it's it'll be a quick break. We're still going to get out and time.

No, while if if you got to leave, you're okay.

I I don't think so.

I need to run to the bathroom.

Heat.

Hey. Hey.

Number

That's

But we um conferred and we don't think we need to go by one by one through all of them because the statement Patrick was saying um earlier of in general staff is clear that you want us to continue moving forward on several of them.

That is correct.

So we don't need the deeper dive into what exactly do you mean? There are two that we want to just make sure we're clear on. Um and that is this tax and government affordability and mobility transit transportation trails. So we uh the rest of them are known enough to staff and you've spoken enough that they feel like they have a good sense of the direction you're asking for.

Okay, good. So, I'm going to ask on this um tax, government affordability, revenue diversification, what you're looking for staff to do, particularly when you're balancing we want them to do a lot more stuff for our our residents. How do we balance maintaining the affordability with um what we're asking to happen?

What are what are you envisioning the staff could do? And Patrick, do you want to say that any more clearly than I do?

Um, no. I think you did a a pretty good job. And I understand council not asking for um direction. We'll take any kind of direction the council wants to give obviously, but trying to get a sense of what are we what are you looking for in terms of tax and government affordability and just taking into account the the needs and desires for economic development and um the infrastructure associated with that and

also the sports tourism associated with that plus the other needs of the city as well. you know, trying to get a sense of what is where where is council trying to land on this. Yeah.

Okay. Hey, Stacy, could I ask you to get things rolling on this?

My pleasure.

All right.

The over the last several years, we've seen a very dramatic increase in the rate of city spending and the rate of taxation on our homeowners.

Uh just in this last year, the uh our you although the rate did not go up, it remained at 97 cents. the assessments went up. Uh, and you know, we've heard from several homeowners that their assessments went up 25 30%.

And there were others that maintained or may have gone down, but overall, I mean, we were at a uh, right 4.7 5% increase in the assessment. And that's a direct, you know, increase to the average uh, homeowner of a 5% increase in their real estate tax.

and the overall the the amount of city spending increased about 4.7% year-over-year.

But yet we give our we not not with our public service. We really took care of our police and our firefighters with a 13% raise, but the overall uh increase in salaries was a 3% raise. And the the average homeowner in Virginia Beach didn't see a 3% raise. They were flat.

Um and and maybe maybe marginally better, but flat. So, we're putting more and more of a burden every year on the homeowner and they're feeling the pain.

Okay, we've I think we've reached a saturation point to where people are saying now, you know, enough is enough.

we can't continue this kind of an increase and um when you ask when you looked at our satisfaction survey that was the number one issue of contention I mean people are happy they think the city's great think we do a great job of running the city but the number one their number one point of contention was the housing affordability and the amount of taxes they're paying on the homes they do own so

um I hear. We all hear it over and over and over again.

Enough is enough. And we need to be cognizant of the fact that we just cannot every time the city has a increased need, we just can't go to our citizens and say, "Well, you got to pay more. We have to we're going to have to make some tough choices. Just like families make a tough choice every single day on their own budgets.

They have to decide, are we going to get a new car? Are we going to keep this one going another year? Are we going to fix the roof or are we going to try to patch it and uh make do for another year? You know, are we going to get new clothes this year or are we just going to, you know, keep wearing the ones we have and pass down uh to the next to the next

child. So, um these are real serious issues that people are facing and we've just as I say we've reached a saturation point. We've reached the point where people have said enough is enough. We can't do it. So if we have to make tough choices as a family, we have to make some tough choices as a city. And I'm one of my priorities was to maintain public services. And I get that there's

a trade-off. But um we that's why we're here. We have to make these tough decisions.

Okay. U Barbara and Rosemary.

Well, Stacy has said it so well. Uh, and you know, we've talked about a lot of things that we would really like to do this year. Uh, but you know, we talk about affordability of the house. Well, an awful lot of that has to do with the taxes. And, you know, as and we know, and it's a good thing, our property is appreciating. And so, when folks get that assessment increase, uh, they've

got a tax increase even if we leave the rate the same. And um I I think we're backed out and you know it's it's really unfortunate that we're going to have to make some choices, but this is the year that we've talked about a lot of things that we would like to do and we would really like to to do all this stuff, but we're going to have to make some

choices. And uh I know I keep hearing from people who say the city has just got to control its its spending. When we talk about a a new building and we say, "Well, this is going to cost $82 million." You know, the people just I don't care what it does. $82 million is is a lot of money. And I think we're saying the num the numbers so quickly that it sounds like it it we think it's

not much money, but it it is a lot of money that we're talking about with all these things. When we look at roads, we finally are doing elbow robe after how many years we were supposed to have started that road, but it's costing us over a hundred million dollars. The inflation for our infrastructure is terrible. And as many much as we want all to to do all these things, we're not going to be able

to. And so this is going to be a tough year for us all because I think our folks have really got all they can pay in taxes and I I think we're going to have to uh to make some terrible choices. It's not going to be easy.

Rosemary, so last year the rate remained the same, 97 cents, but the year before it was 99.

We did drop it two cents from 99 to 97 cents. Um, but the assessments go and it's affecting more people in the coastal communities because the housing prices on the water and worth sees it in his district. I see it in mine. You see it in yours. Probably Josh sees it in his this coastal communities. People want to be on the water and the prices of those have gone skyhigh. I mean, my assessment

has gone up hugely because I live on the water. Um, and then last year with the budget, we cut five positions and it was painful. It was really painful and I think it was the right thing to do, but we're going to have to You talk about cutting spending and I'm hoping that the process improvement commission will come out with some ideas of how we can save some money and

improve things and um, you know, we may have to cut some more positions because that's That's real money as well. So without hurting services. So it's not just not raising the rate or lowering the rate, but also cutting our spending, which is probably our our biggest expense is personnel. And we're probably going to need to look at what positions are not really can be consolidated.

We're usually not very we don't usually fire people. we can find them a place somewhere else, but we may have to figure out some of these positions. And last year with those five, it was it was pretty painful. So, just know that it's not an easy step, but I agree that I'd love to see this decrease the rate again this year.

Okay. Worth.

Thank you, Mayor Tyra. Thanks for the discussion. Uh, one of these stars up here was mine to keep the real estate tax as it is or lower them. So, that being said, uh, with the bond referendum, the citizens did say that we could council could raise real estate tax rate 4.1 cents and this body, this is before I got here, did not. Of course, we could still do that today,

but as Vice Mayor Wilson said, we just reduced the tax last year, kept it the same this year. So the bond referendum $567 million uh really as we're seeing well over $1 billion 1.1 and we're paying for that and not raising the tax real estate tax to pay for that. I find that amazing that we're doing that. So, as soon as I said, you know, lower the tax or keep it the same, you know, we

are absorbing that one over $1.1 billion in extra cost because of the flood mitigation program that we voted 72% to to do. So, that people do need to keep that in mind in terms of government spending because that is an existential issue for the city. That being said, I hear from a lot of citizens that we are a victim of our own success and yes, real estate tax u has gone up

dramatically because of the values uh in my in my district and three or four others I'm sure in district two as well.

So I think the citizens are over the increase the dramatic increase 10 15 20 30% on some year over year and and I've just got to represent them and say enough is enough.

um where we cut on spending. Um I don't have any easy answers. Um I just spoke about the bond referendum. That's a big area right there. That's 30 or 40 million dollars I think every year. The other comment I want to make is this budget was creative this year. We did diversify the tax revenues with a vote registration fee. And as I said earlier, we raised the meals tax that did raise

revenue, but there's a lot of people that are really upset about that. And then I'm gonna keep saying it, the TIP fund is uh paying for a lot of the infrastructure right now in this this year, next year, and following years on infrastructure, not for projects. The TIP fund also is paying $800,000 for the second year and the next three years to the general fund. Again, not the original aim of the tip fund. So, I I

get it. My we do get a lot of district six in the resort does get a lot of support from the budget as it should to invest in tourism. Um but we've got to watch our spending. Thank you.

Okay Josh.

Um thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um and thank you, council member, for bringing up that point about the absorbing the 4.2 or 4.1 cent. Um, and and then on top of that, the two cents uh from a couple years ago, and I believe there was another three cents over the course of I think it was the last maybe six cycles.

Um, total almost nine.

Was that for the rec centers?

Mr. Mayor, I think when I first got here in 2020 July, the tax rate was a dollar. 0175, right? And then if you take the 4.1 out of that, I think it's been roughly a seven cents. Kevin, you know, you need to step up the microphone.

I think it's 2.75 plus a 4.1.

That's That's correct, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, that would be correct. the uh the 4.1 that was associated with was the estimated amount that ultimately ended up being dedicated uh to support the bond referendum as it was approved and that was absorbed through the organic assessment growth year-over-year.

And what is what is that roughly debt capacity wise like in terms of the our ability to pay for our capital projects seven cents over the last however long.

So uh just quick quick math. Um, so every $10 million, um, every $10 million of bonds, about a million dollars in debt service. So if there were $70 million, uh, in year-over-year revenue through real estate tax revenue, that could support about $70 million um dollars in um in debt service.

Yeah, I appreciate that. And and I remember I I'd asked before about um you know what what the assessment growth actually meant for um for our revenue growth and I want to say and these I'm doing this from memory Kevin so um I'm glad you're here but I remember the natural assessment growth combined with the new construction totaled somewhere in the neighborhood of 36 or $37 million um between 36 and $ 38

million. Um and and so that's new construction and then just natural assessment growth. So you take half roughly half that goes to schools. So you're left with roughly u you know $18 million and then you take away from that dedications and then you're left with roughly I don't know $15 million. And this is just kind of rough napkin math.

But um and I know several of times around the table over the last couple years, we've been asked to, you know, come up with 15, 18, $28 million to, you know, finish road projects that have been languishing for years and then we all of a sudden we get hit with revised budget estimates and, you know, we we need to come up with cash and and so or debt capacity. So, I I just I I want

everybody to kind of just keep that in mind. Um I certainly do. I think it's a relatively affordable place to live. I think most people are pleased with their services. Um and I certainly respect everybody who um is and and I empathize with people who are struggling and I think there are ways where where we can provide relief and we certainly do. We provide more tax relief as a city than

any other locality in the region. Um, and it's growing year-over-year. So, and not to mention the state mandates that you were talking about. Um, Mr. Mayor.

Um, so those are tied to that, too. But, um, anyway, I just figured I'd throw a little bit of that out there.

C Kevin, Mr. Mayor, I just Kevin, I think you need to clarify. I think I think the $70 million in debt service is the equivalent of $700 million in program bonds. Yes, sir.

Okay. Cash. So just quick math here. Not me but you. Um so he's the expert.

My calculator.

So so if we are going to try to keep the tax rate where it's at and that's really our plan as council, wouldn't we need a new revenue source coming in in order for that to be true? or we would but in theory have to cut services.

I'll start with that Kevin. Um I think the council's talking more what I'm hearing is that some members of council may be a majority of councils worried about the impact of the inflationary increases on the households and there's and then and we can't control the assessments because of how the state constitution is. So, I think a lot of the council members are asking for us to consider looking at a

decrease, right? Um, holding it the status quo gives a lot more flexibility, right? So, if if the if we were to present a recommended budget at 97 cents, which is the current tax rate, it gives us a lot more flexibility to achieve some of the other things that the council indicated it wants us to do.

If we are to decrease it, say a penny or a couple pennies, it removes that flexibility. And we don't know enough yet to see what that means yet in terms of where we are, you know. But if if that's where the council wants to go, it just basically creates more um difficulty in navigating the budget. And that's where the conversation came from several council members is that we may

need to look at how we spend, right? You know, it could also mean that we continue to look at our dedications again, right? because we did make some reductions to those. But maybe some of them could take some further reductions in combination with a decrease and still be able to plug in some of these other priorities that we want and look at some of our other fund balances to see if

there's a needs force that could be generated surplus or things like that, you know. So, if we stay the same, there's more capacity and more room to do stuff. If we reduce, it makes it more challenging. And if you reduce it, also brings down our debt capacity and our bonding capacity as well that we'd have to take into account.

Thank you, city manager. Thank you. Um, but it for me it makes me think and and you guys probably know more than me and so I'm okay with that. I just I I care about the people and I just want you to know that sports tourism is got to be our driving. I think and okay driving.

How do you feel about sports?

I was passionate. I was in my mode. You messed it up.

You got your roller blades on, right?

But but wouldn't we and the reason why I say wouldn't we need a new revenue source i.e.

sports tourism something in sports tourism to offset the balance where we can still maintain our current u tax rate and not have to cut services. I mean that's that's really what I'm saying again.

Kevin, I'll go again.

Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Manager.

Sir, it it it depends. It we don't know a lot yet right now. So, we're just getting a general sense of what council's tolerance is as we start to think out the budget that we're going to present to council in um March. And this is early, right? But we generally like to get a feedback of what your tolerance is going to be as so Kevin and I can set expectations with the department heads

when they start to get their wish list together in September. We usually meet with them and tell them, "Hey, this is the lay of land. This is the world. This is the vibe check we're getting from council, right?" And then Kevin works to put that together for you all in November for the 5-year forecast to get a little bit more feedback from you all.

And then eventually we'll have a budget retreat probably end of January, end of January, February time, beginning of February time frame to kind of let you know this is kind of how things are rolling out. We'll get the assessments from our their wonderful city assessor and that'll give you a general sense of where we want to go. If council wanted to dedicate additional funding for um

sports tourism, that could that could happen via maybe council would say raise a payment of real estate tax and tie it to sports tourism. No one is saying that. Let me clarify. Council could also say something to the effect of we got current dedications.

Some of them may have capacity or some may need to be repurposed towards new priorities. Wisconin could say stay the same or or go lower but take whatever we got existing and rep prioritize it to prevailing needs of the city which could be things like sports tourism investment or um expansion of the innovation park for expanding our economic base and things like that. So there's there's

options to it but as I think Mrs. Henley said all those options have choices right and some of those choices are palatable and some of them are not palatable but Mr. Cummings as he said the households are going through the same thing as well right you know sometimes you got to choose between a new car or keeping the mortgage payment okay Rosemary Josh Michael so something that Chesapeake has done

the last couple of years was rather than reducing their rate is they gave a credit on their uh citizens tax bill. So let's say it was a three cents real estate credit. And so if we're contemplating a rate reduction, I'd like to at least look at that to see that's what Chesapeake has done these last few years, which is still the same amount of money, but instead of a rate decrease,

it's a credit that would be given to their homeowners. And so I think it would be worth looking into.

Okay, Josh. And then uh Michael, thank you, mayor. Um and something I wrote down I forgot to say before, but Mr. Manager, you brought up um I I know we we u dipped into some of these dedications. I I think they need to if there are any others that um that have way too healthy fund balance that are um that we're not utilizing. I I think that makes a lot of sense um to me. um

recognizing of course the the funds that have already been kind of tapped into.

So um if there's new ground to cover in that area um I think it's worthwhile.

Hey Michael,

thank you. Um I want to keep this conversation as friendly and and positive as it has been. so far. But I also have to express some frustration because I I share the sentiments that um have been expressed about the the burdens that individuals and households are experiencing. I those of us who just completed a campaign last year can affirm and not that you needed to complete a campaign

to affirm, but almost everyone we spoke to rose that as the number one issue. So we know that it is But what confounds me and and I've been on the council for more than six years, so let's call it about roughly 12 retreats.

The same people who call for a reduction in tax rate, Mr. Cummings excluded in this instance right now for now. We'll revisit this 6 months or 12 months later. The same people who called for that reduction are calling for new spending in the same meeting.

And I I have no idea how those individuals square that. How are we going to pay for a new 160 million plus recreation center in the southern part of the city and provide the services we've committed to providing and cut taxes?

One way is by expanding the tax base.

I'm all for that. And I'm not trying to be argumentative or combative. How are we going to pay for an aquarium expansion and renovation, hund00 million road projects, and honor our commitments to the people of Windsor Woods who deserve flood protection and are entitled to it?

And so it's just a little bit frustrating and I find it some frankly some largely hypocritical um that this narrative continues to emerge retreat after retreat after retreat. I would like to see I'm for a tax reduction but I would also like to see some responsibility and consistency. I'm not lecturing anyone here. I'm just pointing out the obvious that we cannot increase spending and reduce taxes in the same meeting.

Okay Stacy.

Okay.

I'm not calling for uh an increase in spending. What I'm calling for is a re prioritization of our spending.

We we're working with the process improvement commission to hopefully find ways to be more efficient or to find some ways that we can save in our spending. Working with the city manager's office and with the um budget director uh trying to get out ahead of this before the budget comes out. But we can't continue to increase our spending five, six, eight% every single year when people's incomes are flat or declining.

So that that's just you. We can't continue that's not a matter of can we or not it or can we? We can't we cannot continue to increase the burden on the homeowners because there's a point to where they just I'm all in. I have no more. And what are you going to do? You going to take your house away? No. So, we need to be more sensitive to that looking forward. And

I'm not calling for any more. We our budget last last year was 2.8 billion.

And that's schools. That's everything all in. And I know that that's not discretionable income, but if we kept it flat and rep prioritize some spending, we could give some tax relief to the homeowner. And going forward, we need to start thinking that way that uh if inflation's 2 and a half%.

We need we need to start thinking of a 2 and a half% increase or maybe even a slightly less than two and a half%.

Because we're outspending people's income and we can't continue to do that.

It's not a matter of um it's not a matter of want to, it's a matter we can't. So we I'm I'm saying we've reached that point that not calling for more spending, calling for a rep priatorization of it. And I think that's what this most people in the city that I'm speaking to, that's what they're asking for.

Okay.

Yeah. Rosemary.

Our budget this past year, a large part of the increase was salaries, which we really needed to do. we only need to do it for public safety and for our other employees. So even if you keep everything the same, does that mean you don't give the employees a a raise each year and when everybody else around you is getting raises? So you just need to figure all of that in. It's not just we're spending more. It's

our employees deserve a raise every year because their costs are going up and and they need it to manage their families.

So, we just need to take that in consideration.

Yeah sure.

Safety first.

And that's great. So, if we're going to if we're going to say our employees should live on a 3% increase, then how do you look in the mirror and say, "But we're going to raise the cost of government double that."

There has to be some correlation there.

Yeah. There has to be some common sense reasoning. I'm not saying don't give anybody a raise. I'm saying there's got there's got to be a correlation there that if if the cost of government goes up 3% then our spending should go up at most 3%.

So I'm not saying don't give people raises. I'm not saying fire people. I'm saying let's find ways to be more efficient. Let's find ways to rep prioritize what we're spending and what we're doing so that we're not continuing to put this increased burden year over year over year on the homeowner.

Okay. Uh Josh and then Michael, just a quick question, speaking of the pay raises, um and I think it's important to keep numbers in in mind even though I can't remember the exact number of the employee raises. What was it somewhere in the $13 million range?

Kevin, can you come back up?

Thanks buddy.

Kevin, I think it'll be good to approach it as every year, what's at 3%. You know, and then you can talk about what it was with the market salary survey. Yeah.

So, for the general fund, um roughly 3% compensation adjustments equivalent about $15 million. So, um, the market salary survey, there was some, uh, direction from city council was to target those that were, uh, most in need. Um, and primarily with a heavy emphasis on the public safety departments and combined between the 3% for the general workforce and those, uh, through the market salary

implementation, it was closer to about 30 million um, in total compensation year-over-year increase.

Okay. I really appreciate that just because so that 13 million is floating around in my head right next to the $38 million when we kept the rate the same and the natural assessment growth that was then knocked down to 16 million and then the dedications off of that. So like just keeping the rate the same to your point doesn't cover the raises and and then we've got road projects or e

exigent circumstances that come up and and other new programs and things that people you know tell us that they want and we we go champion. So um just full picture full context.

Okay Michael just to follow up I don't disagree with anything that's been said. I agree with everything that Mr. Cummings stated and I and I didn't mean to implicate you as part of the the problem that we've had.

Although I do think to be fair, we appropriated an additional $30 million toward your district at your request for in new spending or at least accelerated spending um even within this calendar year. Um and I supported that, was glad to support that. Um but just like household costs are going up, the costs of government are going up. So discussion about keeping the rate the same and providing the same services is

just not a possibility, especially within the context of all the other things that we've discussed this morning and that are represented on the board about things that we would like to see.

So it's a real challenge. It's a real challenge. It's something we have to to work through together. And one of the ways that and I don't I can't get into the specifics but when you talk about when one talks about rep prioritization and um developing efficiencies I always try to figure out what is that what exactly does that mean? We have to figure out a way to unpack that a little

further. Where are the efficiencies that need to be? And I'm not that I know that there are some for sure. Um, and I think one of the ways that that can be addressed is that, and I'm not going to start naming departments because it's a dangerous game and a lot of the the department directors are here in the room. So I they shut your mic off.

That's what happened. But I don't want to start naming departments. But when you start looking through the the organization, there are services that have been delivered for decades after decades after decades. And we've got to figure out do those services meet the needs that exist in 2025. And I think that's where some of the efficiencies could be. But those are going to be hard choices. We actually

experienced one during the last budget cycle.

And that was five positions. And that was incredibly painful um and has reverberated continues to have reverberations through. Um, but I I think we need to to start we can't we can't we we've got to figure out where those services are and how those that those services are being delivered and and I'm going to name a few. We're talking about parks. We're talking about rec centers, talking about libraries.

Those are all programs we value.

And yet it's very expensive to do those things. and are they are they matching our needs in 2025 and beyond? And and I think that's how we can identify some efficiencies or let's call them changes or rep prioritizations, but it's not going to be easy and it's going to it could be painful because people rely on those services. They expect those services. They enjoy those services. So

continuing to provide them continues to cost more. And we've if we're going to truly be serious about providing relief, we've got to figure out a way how to do that. And what does it actually mean?

That's the part we have to get to.

Stacy, I'd love to have you come join us on the process improvement commission to to flush out these efficiencies because you would there's only one problem. Your honor, too, that equals three.

Do the math.

It's No one says it's easy. No one says if it was easy, we would have done it many years ago.

Yeah.

I'm saying it's necessary. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm saying it's necessary.

No. And I tell you, I agree with everybody what's going on. But let me say this, you know, once again in about 6 months or so, we're going to have yet another confrontation with reality. And uh I'll tell you once again, you know, we have a lot of factors that are going into this. And you know, once again, I brought up the unfunded underfunded mandates that are a big part of it. And

if you kind of look at the national scene over years where with the um you know, Kevin, can you come back up here?

Why don't you just grab a chair? Um he's so popular. You know, I believe we got $37 trillion in debt and the debt service on this is now 6% of GMP, which is larger larger than the Department of Defense and Medicare, which means is, am I accurately saying that's money not going to uh goods and services that may come to the realities on why we have to do road and bridge projects and things

like that. Kevin, I think it's also to clarify that the mayor is not talking about the city of Virginia.

Yes.

No, I'm not talking about talking about on the national scene that you know and then the other thing is too you know postco you know we have had a nation of considerable uh inflation which has really cut into disposable of income. And then once again, it was brought up since I became mayor in 2018 that the price of bu materials that we use for all these projects gone up 99%.

Is is that you know a pretty accurate uh you know position?

Yes sir. Uh last year whenever I was talking to city council presenting at the CIP retreat that was um a slide that was displayed talking about the um producer price index and the change of cost and goods and materials dating back to 201819 time frame and it has gone up um considerably and essentially doubled in in the price of those goods and materials.

Okay. Thank you. You you can sit down.

You don't have to grab your chair.

I'm also sure about that.

Yeah. Uh, no, but let me just say this about that and and that's the dilemma.

That's the challenge that we're going to have going forward because you know something everybody everything everybody said is correct and that is yeah that presents a dilemma that presents a challenge that we must do and uh you know but the thing is I tell you what if you look at nationally and I keep on hating there's a lot of folks all over the place paying a lot more uh especially in the northern states and

things of that but I'm not going to use that as an argument.

We're talking about our people down here. And Stacy, you're 100% right. Uh but one of the reasons we started process improvement, I guess it was around 15 years ago, is for exactly this. Uh you know, for you to now go in and do do a deep dive and really take a critically look a look. The purpose of process improvement was to take programs and put an outside set of eyes. You

know, form an ad hoc committee, bring in some exper uh experts from the outside that take an objective look on how we do business and that's been a successful model we've been using for a while. And uh you got some remarkable people on there. And uh now you have the luxury of time, you know, back in your rookie days and you were there just thrown into the budget cauldron. But now that you have

the experience and you understand the processes a little bit, you know, by all means take that deep dive, you know, go in and, you know, bring us some back and I think, you know, that's the way we do it. But until that time, until we have the economic p picture at the time of the budget and everything, but the thing is if you can be laying the foundation for it, give us an objective analysis,

let's see what we can do. Let's get to yes on that. Okay.

So, Mr. Mr. Mayor, if I were to summarize the conversation you just had and how it relates to a 24-month focused action plan, most of the other ones we're talking about are giving a vision to for staff to follow. This one is kind of a a dual purpose where there are things staff um should be working on.

they'll support the process improvement um uh steering committee and work on efficiencies that tends to be around the edges and not big enough to solve the problems uh of of money in the magnitude you're talking about, but they'll they'll continue to work on that. They will also, it sounds like, bring ideas and suggestions to the budget retreat and the the budget proposal, keeping in

mind your big picture that none of you um are in interested in making government more unafford affordable or expensive for your residents. The other part is on you all and and I heard you say we need to rep prioritize. We need to make the hard decisions. And so some of this is staff can bring you a lot of information, but you're the ones that ultimately have to decide, are we cutting services? Are we raising taxes

to support um these new services we want to? Are we going to be doing things differently? And um so to me, this this one feels a little different than the other priorities. You know, I'll tell you what. Um, you know, uh, you know, budget season is a contact sport and, you know, once again, you know, all budgets are in a state of transformation and flux depending on time, you know, depending

on funding we get from uh, uh, federal, state, and everything that there's a lot of unknowns when you go into budget season. And so, we I guess we're just uh, have to confront with the reality at the time. And uh you know once again I think we got kind of a schematic of a plan but until we get the actual where we are at the time uh you know that you

know there's not much we can do now but I think with Stacy and Josh uh with uh process improvement you know go to the outside experts too don't be afraid that you can form an ad hoc committee with this thing you know get some of the economists get the people you know you know uh look at best practice ices at other cities how they're doing it. You know, if there's a path, you can find it. Okay.

Anything else for you?

The the last one of your priorities that we wanted to just make sure we've got a better understanding of what it looks like for you. Is this mobility, transit, transportation trails neighborhood traffic, and safety? Um, thinking 12 months to 24 months, what are you expecting to see staff working on? What how far, how deep, how fast do you want them working to continue on mobility, transit transportation traffic

trails, anybody?

Are there any enhancements that the council wants to see here? that is what in our control right you know because we're doing a lot as it relates to the trail you know and working on getting federal funding for that a lot of the HRT related items are not necessarily in our control and are cost prohibitive based on some of the things that we've brought to you all previously as well so

is there any enhancements that you all foresee that y'all like us to consider let's go Amelia let me ask you first with HRT and then we'll go to Michael right concerning HRT we need to come to a consensus on what they've brought to us even though we've sent letters to them. I've noticed another letter has come back.

So, we need to do a kumbaya on deciding because of the money of the 130 million.

Um I'm hearing there may be others possibly could use but we need to come to the table and you know discuss that.

That's one. They're also bringing up the system optimization plan where they will have to consolidate certain um bus routes. So that is one part we could look at as well.

Thank you Michael. And then Rosemary.

So those employees, Michael, um I'm going to bring up something that doesn't cost any money, and that is traffic call me. And we spent a lot of time talking about this uh so it's comes as no surprise to you but there's a gap between the professional data that measures these things and the um perception that people have about their safety in their neighborhoods.

It's and it's also one of the top things that people provide to me. It doesn't matter what neighborhood I go to.

traffic safety is one of their top concerns. And it's kind of challenging for me because on one hand, I I completely understand and respect the professional expertise that's being shared with with me as a council member um by the people who work every day in traffic safety and I I value their judgment and their wisdom and their guidance. But then on the other hand, I also understand

the the feelings that the experiences that people have had. I just got an email today about um a neighborhood where there were parked cars that were hit and it's dangerous and the school just started and um we've got to find a we I don't think we're done yet in traffic calming. We have to find a way to to bridge that divide a little bit more carefully. I don't know

what that means, but I hope we can make some progress on it and provide something that more than you don't meet the traffic calming program that has been set up because that's the answer we give to a lot of people and I it's increasingly not hard to deliver that and unacceptable too.

Good. Rosemary, I wanted to address the HRT issue. We put that on the agenda so the council could have an opportunity to hear all of that and Mr. Herald was able to come forward. So I I think we've already heard it and it's not really our decision. It's the development authorities's decision and they actually spoke before the development authority again. If the development authority

wants to um hear it again, that's that's up to them. But I I think we've we've already done that, so I don't think we need to do it again.

Okay.

Any response, Amelia?

Well, just what councilwoman um Wilson is mentioning, we have brought it up. I asked you if they could speak and it did. And I do see another letter that's come forth.

But um even at that time, the Virginia Beach Development said they were not interested in doing that. They're already advertising that area. But I'm also hearing there may be other spots they could look at. So this is what I'm talking about doing a kambaya sitting to the table not a presentation so much to the council but with one or two people with uh Virginia Beach Development Authority to

look at what are suggestions because I remember even Lisa said there options that they would look at that simulate that site is already like Elvis has left the building. So they need to realize that and see what's possibility so that they do not lose the funding that they have.

I think uh you know the goal is to find a path to somehow get to Yes.

Yeah.

Okay. Josh, I was just curious um how the traffic safety improvements fund is doing um just healthwise and um and we can you can answer it later, but just as we were looking at at this, a lot of a lot of what what's on there kind of comes out of that fund. if it's right sized.

So, this is predominantly currently funded by general fund and eventually once um the new speed enforcement cameras are coming online for the school zones that will provide additional revenue, but that's not projected to come online till probably around the beginning of the next um new year. Yep.

So right now there's still a good amount of um general fund money in there and the items that the council members request as part of reconciliation plus the projects that were already programmed are moving forward based on that funding but it should see additional plus up once the speeding force for school zones um revenue starts to come inside the system.

Okay. And just a quick follow on, I remember getting a CCSR recently saying that we we had moved through a lot of the um projects that were tied uh to grants before we could get new grants.

So, a lot of the sidewalk projects and the sidewalk money that was kind of tied up. Um those projects are out out the door, that's also in good shape and we're making progress.

Let me look into that and follow up.

Okay, Michael or Worth, I'm sorry. Thank you, mayor. Just two things on this particular topic. Earlier this year, the resort advisory commission, RACK, sent us a letter asking for us to look into microtransit at the resort. We have not responded to that. Just a reminder, we did have the freebie program a couple years ago. I think the appetite of this body, including myself, is was not to

extend that past its last expiration because it cost the tip fund, you know, probably close to a million dollars or plus. But that being said, I do ask for us, Mr. City Manager and colleagues, to consider programs, microtransit programs at the resort, not at an extra cost, but to look into, you know, some RFP for freebie and anyone else out there to pres to provide some kind of lowcost microransit

uh program at the resort. And if it's not if it does not cost the tip fund any money or the general fund any money, you know, let's look at that. But right now, we we're not this is a dead issue with staff because you you know, we have not sent done anything with this letter of request for microtransit at the resort.

Secondly, uh VB trail, I think this is what I put on my piece on this and this is where this last conversation about the cost of government versus spending.

Um we have I think maybe three of the five legs of the VB trail paid for that roughly we have made some spending decisions on this 15 to 20 or more million dollars. you know, is that the right amount of money to spend on VB trail with government, national, federal government matching programs? I think it's a great program for this city. The arguments against spending this kind of money for VB trail, but does this

spending induce better transportation, more efficiency, some development around VB trail that could produce more taxes?

So, this is where these decisions where there's pros and cons of whether you want to spend some more money or not and not have tax increases. So, BB Trail um do we want to keep forward? We still have maybe two more legs to go. Um but it's going to come at a cost.

Hutch and then Amelia.

So, this is Stace. So, this is um I I wasn't sure we were where I'm doing this. So, if this is not the time, let me know. Um, one of the things there, uh, some of, you know, as I'm an avid cyclist and there's a lot and we're trying to connect the trails and there's some of us and the directors that, you know, we we bike and we're trying to connect to VB trail, you know, to

Trashmore and different things is and we've talked about some overpasses, you know, some some different stuff, but I just wonder if it could if we could get an analysis or some some idea of cost is like on any of the four and I think it's called four lane divided highway. That's that's like Providence Road, right? Two and median and two is a fourlane divided. You know, could we take the

right lane of all those lanes, start connecting them with a an 18inch white line that is you got some bike chevrons in it so that you start to make it a little more friendly for for cyclists to to get to places. Not I'm not talking huge to start with, you know, just start thinking about that. What it would cost, what would that look like?

you know, literally is it a dead issue.

Um, I just know that a lot of folks think, you know, cyclist should ride on the sidewalk. Um, one thing, it's illegal. The other is it's how you get killed because if you haven't checked, just check yourself. I ask you when you go home today or when you're riding through your neighborhood, where do you stop? Nobody stops before the stop sign.

You stop about three and a half feet past the stop sign. That's the sidewalk area that we're coming off of. So, lots of collisions occur that way. So that's that's really why it's not allowed. The best way is to have the lines on the street. I'm not talking about taking over any streets. I know NOFK did some of that and it was very controversial, but just just 18 in white line, green

line, something like that. What that would cost? Is it feasible? You know, I don't know if it fits in there. Great.

Thanks.

Okay Amelia.

Yes. I'm going back to uh Councilman Ramik's idea for the microtransit. We have it the one we have here. We have one over in Newport News and so forth is working well. The problem that I'm looking at is at the resort. Are people willing to pair up like that? A lot of people are used to having their own cars. Unless you're looking at the uh tourists where like how freebie work, a family of

three or four could get into that. But we had to talk and let them know at the general meetings one which I go to on Thursday that freebie wasn't free.

So the name just threw people off. They thought we had it for free but we were paying through your funding. So, um, for that area, you need to kind of clarify whether it's something mainly that will help the tourists get around or it's something that we can use that come all the way to um, district 9 for that transit because a lot of the people who use it in the certain area are not

headed all the way down to the ocean front. So, there may be a need. The second thing is the VB trio. Lots of people, little markets, little develop developments are important because they see people back and forth on that trail. So, it could bring up some development, some smaller businesses that people could stop by like how um our cyclist Hutch, he's good, I don't cycle, but um there's

a opportunity for some development once that is all through from failure all the way across. I think it's important.

Thank you.

Thank you, Cash.

I'll be quick. Thank you. This is about transportation. Um, I am concerned a little bit about our Are we a 15minute city in terms of getting to locations?

If according to our comp plan, are we designed to be a 15-minute city um to grocery stores or to the interstate?

If that's the case, I'm not sure if we are. Um, and then I was watching someone at a bus station and it took an hour for the bus to get there and obviously they don't have a car. They're going to work so that they can get their own transportation. Um, but we do have to look at transportation. Now, we have a lot of people that drive. We are a very um

thriving city. And so I'm I'm going to bring it to a close here. I do like HRT for their what they do in Norphick.

We've already put a pin in it when it comes to um what we talked about at council before. So I'm with you. But I do think that our transportation needs an overhaul.

I don't know how best to say it, but but that Okay. Thank you.

Okay. You know, let me just uh close it out here. Um yesterday I had lunch with uh the mayor of Portsouth and a representative of one of our major um factories and there was a discussion about the frustration of getting employees to this factory especially when you got three shifts going on. Uh but once again, you know, it's very it's very very expensive and we're talking about cutting costs

and then we're talking about the need for transportation which is a necessity.

You know, I'm on the transportation planning organization. I can tell you every city in the 757 shares the same frustration. How does somebody from Northark or Virginia Beach get to the shipyard, you know, in Newport News? And once again, we, you know, we have, once again, I'll call it barriers to success. We have tunnels. We have bodies of water. Uh we're not in any type of grid system, uh where our

roads and highways lend themselves favorably like New York, Boston, Chicago to have an effective transit system.

Ultimately, I as we were talking yesterday, the ultimate goal is to transition to autonomous vehicles where you can pick up an elderly person in a culde-sac and get her to the doctor, but that's still a ways away, but once again to be there is no real immediate solution now. You know, cost prohibitive.

Right. So, our goal this afternoon has been to hear your priorities for the 24-month focused action plan so that staff can move forward with them. We've gone through the top six. Staff feels like they've got a good sense of the other um six that are up here. Before I tell you what's next, anyone have something that they wanted to mention on the other six that um hadn't that you haven't already mentioned?

Okay, we're good to go.

Okay. So, next steps for the focused action plan. We're meeting with department directors tomorrow. So while it's very fresh what you all have said they can start mapping out what um what they think they can do um there will then be community feedback opportunity for the first two weeks of September and then taking what department directors have done the community feedback staff

will provide a draft plan to council in uh midocctober and then two weeks later have a have you all have a conversation.

So, you'll have gotten community input, you'll be able to see a draft plan, have a conversation, and then about two weeks after that, staff will provide an updated plan based on your feedback, and at just before Thanksgiving, you will affirm what you see in the 24-month action plan. staff would then use it for all that infrastructure of we're setting goals, we're checking in, we're having

um progress reports and they would share progress reports with you uh twice a year. So that's the next steps of what's happening with this.

I think the plan has a plan.

The plan has a plan. The planners are good at planning. Um so that concludes what we originally planned to do today.

The mayor wanted me to ask all of you, do you want to have some of the discussion that we were planning for tomorrow morning now or are you ready to go home and have the discussion tomorrow? Um, and I'll just preview you um when we talked to you all ahead of time and the manager and his team has been listening to what you wanted to have the additional discussions about.

Governance of council was the overarching topic. Some of the ideas were should we discuss council pay for council members? Are there some council policies for how we operate that we need to review? Um street naming and how our our process of street naming goes and ebikes and then opening for others. So those were the topics we've heard that you might want to talk about and checking

save it for tomorrow morning. I saw a vigorous yes tomorrow morning. Um but it's um asking you because you asked me.

You know the point is that you know once again respecting time long day you know we are finishing ahead of 5:30. Uh we're probably could be here another hour or so. Uh would it be more prudent to just come in in the morning, have an abbreviated session? You know that you know this was a pretty long day. Michael uh no problem there. I just wonder are there any of those on that list that we

could knock out really quickly? I mean no. Okay.

It'd be nice if we could. It's just another long day tomorrow. It's up to the council, you know, but it it is have you can knock it out tonight if you want to or if you do it tomorrow, it's probably an hour or two.

Yeah, it's probably going to take an hour or two. And um as the city clerk diligently has pointed out, we have to pay for the breakfast anyway.

So look at it this way is an opportunity for more free food worth.

So what what is the the next step? It's a recap of what we and then we can have a you know a summary too then ju you know just as a you know capstone you know quick overview after the thing. What what's your thoughts?

A capstone of what we talked about today.

Yeah after we do the governor's right uh tomorrow.

Tomorrow my intent was to do it before you do the governance so it's fresh.

Okay we can do that first.

Fresh overnight thinking oh I forgot to say or I want to clear up. Um but just making sure you're all on the same page.

Um do that quickly and then have the governance discussions.

Okay. Millia Rosemary.

Well, I was looking at the governance especially because I know I won't be here for past close to 9:30 10 before the recap.

You want to do the governance first tomorrow morning and then just recap this? That's fine.

Yeah. No, we'll get we get the idea is we'll come tomorrow. We'll get figured out what we want to do. Rosemary, so I asked to speak about the legislative package at the retreat. Is that going to be included in the governance or when are we supposed to do that?

Yep.

Yep.

Sorry. Yeah, that was very formal. Yes, ma'am.

So, we'll be talking about that as part of governance. Do you um is that something where you need staff bringing something to you or is that a discussion?

I think that would be a a table discussion around the table.

Okay.

Okay. Patrick, anything else?

Uh good on my end.

Okay.

Okay. Free breakfast tomorrow, folks.

So So continental breakfast starts at 8.

We'll start at 8:30 and we will end your session no late later than 11:30 tomorrow. Okay. All right. Thank you. I tell you what, that was a great conversation, folks. And thank the staff and thank you for the people in the gallery that came here. Thank you all.

We see you tomorrow.