The City Council of Chesapeake held a work session from 4:45 p.m. to 6:03 p.m. followed by a regular meeting beginning at 6:30 p.m. on March 12, 2024, at City Hall Council Chamber. The work session featured presentations on three major capital priorities: the Multipurpose Event Facility market study, the Cuffee Aquatic Center update, and the Public Safety Training Academy update. The regular meeting included a proclamation, public comments, consent agenda, a regular agenda item concerning the Chesapeake Redevelopment and Housing Authority (CRHA), and new business items including curbside recycling, a zoning ordinance amendment, and several administrative requests.
Want to welcome everyone to our March twelfth uh twenty twenty-four city council uh work session. Uh Mr. Manager, it looks like we have uh some interesting topics uh tonight, so looking forward to hearing from you. We do, thank you, Mr. Mayor. So as you all know, it's budget season in a couple of weeks we'll be presenting the city manager's budget. Um, but we we like to come to you at different points in the year, so um, we came to you last uh um last summer to talk about your priorities to sort of refresh and update those priorities. Um we're here now to talk about where we are on those priorities and some things on the horizon, and then of course a couple weeks uh you'll get the um work session on the draft budget itself. So I'm sorry for the eye test that this shows much better on TV than it does uh for y'all, but you have it in front of you. This the the next few slides are the um slides that we've shown you for several years now about um council's identified capital, mostly capital, some operating, but mostly capital priorities. And so you can see at the top of the line the public safety training academy what has been your number one capital priority. Um that that um phase one is fully funded in the CIP. But um as you're gonna see in a little bit, uh, we have some recommendations um to accelerate that project. Chesapeake Connects is the broadband ring around the city. We funded that um almost entirely um with uh federal stimulus money, and that project is is well underway. Um you can I'm not gonna read through all of these, but um on the operating side, um your your top priorities were the pay plan. So we implemented both the sworn law enforcement and the um and the uh retention policy, the public safety pay plan, the general workforce pay plan. So those are fully implemented, and then we continue to make sure we don't fall out of the same three, uh, the top three every year. The community pool, obviously, well underway, um, and you're gonna get a presentation on that in a little bit. So those are fully programmed or funded through the project as we knew it as of the last budget. So some of this thing, some of these will change um based on what we're what we're gonna recommend moving forward. Um road maintenance. Um I think uh everybody knows we have hundreds and hundreds of miles of roads. We are way behind in terms of how much we should be dedicating um to road maintenance every year. Uh we continue to make progress there, but there's still a lot of work to be done. Um adult detention facility, um, where we're making some uh proposed changes that you'll see over the next uh over the coming months, and um that'll have both some expenditures on the capital side but ongoing operational savings. And then when we get into minimally funded or unfunded, um you have some requests uh that the council has received that you've asked us to look into. And then lastly, um the uh one of the things we'll discuss with you tonight, um, convocation center and performing arts center. So if you recall a couple years ago, um some groups came before council and presented um some some what what they felt like on behalf of the community were some top needs. Um a pool was one of those, and and obviously we've advanced that project. Um performing arts center was another one, and convocation center was a third one. Um very candidly, I think it's highly unlikely or at least impractical to do two separate facilities. It would be the the cost of one single facility as as you'll see is overwhelming, but two separate facilities would probably be unattainable. And so you'll see a presentation tonight on a market study that we've done to answer whether even there's a market for such a facility in Chesapeake. Um but as you'll see, and I don't want to preempt the team, but the um the cost estimate is astounding, and uh it it would it would test the limits of our capacity to to be able to pursue that project with city-only funding. Um so today's agenda we're gonna have an update on the multi-purpose event center market study, where we'll give you an update on the Cuffy Aquatic Center, and then finally an update on the Public Safety Training Academy. So I'll turn it over to Brian to introduce the consultant team on the multi-purpose event center. Thank you, Mr. Manager, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. It's my pleasure to introduce to you Charlie Johnson of John Johnson Consulting Group out of Chicago. Um they are experts in the field in basic feasibility and market studies, such as what we're talking about this evening. Um it's a very comprehensive study that's taken over a year to accomplish, and and that's because uh I believe the team was very diligent in exhausting absolutely all opportunities for stakeholder involvement that as the manager indicated really tries to maximize uh the opportunity and the synergies of combining a convocation um slash exhibit hall type of center with a performing arts type of venue as well as you know potential uh higher tier um investment um that that kind of pulls it all together and and really creates a lot of vibrancy in addition to the opportunity for uh programming that that the city um hasn't seen in our business community as well. So um I'm gonna turn it right over to to Mr. Johnson here to run through it's really an exhaustive um study that that um goes through all aspects of of what you would hope to see um and and determining what our market can bear. So Charlie. Thank you. Thank you, Brian. And just want to thank you all for allowing us to have served you for this study. And I want to thank Michael and Brian for the support they gave us through our work and the management team at the current facility.