Good evening, everyone, and uh welcome to Hampton City Council uh legislative session.

Uh good to see a lot of people come out and uh sit with us this evening.

So uh looking forward to uh uh hearing our public comments and uh welcoming all of our visitors and guests this evening.

Uh with that I want to ask the clerk to please call the roll.

Councilman Bowman, Vice Mayor Brown, here councilwoman Campbell, present, councilwoman Fairby here, Councilwoman Harper, present, councilwoman Muggler, present.

Mayor Greg.

Present.

And uh invitation this evening will be given by uh Vice Mayor Stephen Brown.

Bow heads and prayer.

Father, we give you praise.

We thank you, Lord, for this day.

This is the day you made, and you say we should rejoice in it and be glad.

Thank you, Lord, for an opportunity to uh sit here tonight and to discuss the business of the city.

We pray for civility, we pray for peace.

We pray for our citizens, and we pray for those who are away from us and who serve on the front lines of and those who have given the ultimate sacrifice as first responders and those who serve in military service.

I pray tonight, Lord, for our country.

I pray, God, that uh civility and that mercy and peace uh and justice would prevail.

We pray now, God's we do the business of the city.

We pray that we would uh put citizens first, and we thank you, Lord, for the new elected members of this council.

Thank you for our meetings today and the collaboration among each person who served this great city.

And so, God, we ask tonight that you would find favor in all that we say and do.

And God, we give you praise.

We give you glory, we give you honor, and all of God's people say together.

Amen.

Amen.

Just have a couple of comments uh this evening on the on the mayor's comments.

Uh and the first of those being that uh as a new mayor, um, you know, I had a desire to get out and meet with the community and meet with people in the public.

Uh, you know, we do a lot of that during the campaign season, but now as we uh work on getting down to the business of the city, um, you know, I just think it's uh it's a good opportunity for me to get out and kind of talk to people in the community and uh kind of meet you, you know, at your areas, your neighborhoods, uh, your businesses and all, and kind of learn what you want to see in our city.

You know, that can certainly help guide our decisions and guide my thoughts and and decisions that we go forward.

So we uh working with my staff have uh developed a uh a schedule uh of uh listening sessions is what I was called those.

And uh, you know, so we'll we'll be out uh in the community and I want to give a couple of dates.

Uh uh and let me say first, I'm actually two weeks behind.

I was supposed to start two weeks ago, but uh I did have uh knee replacement surgery back on the 27th of January, and my schedule for getting back at full duty was uh a little bit more aggressive than what the doctors and the physical therapists have planned.

So I had to postpone the initial session, so that put me two weeks behind on that, but we'll make up that session.

So our first listening session will be on February 19th from 6 until 7:30 at the uh Fox Hill Neighborhood Center or at that at 65 Hall Road, and then uh March 5th, uh I'll be at Feebers Community Center on uh same time, 6 to 7.30.

Uh March 19th at Northampton Community Center, and then on April 2nd at Aberdeen Elementary School.

And we have some additional dates that we plan to uh add to those, but those are the first four meeting nights, and so you know, feel free to come out one of those.

Um uh, you know, I know uh as we move into our budget season and people have uh received their assessment cards.

I know you know that's one thing that's on a lot of people's mind, but you know, there are other things that we can talk about as well, and certainly we'll be able to speak to that and and anything else that uh you know you you have you know that you think that benefits our city, benefits us as a council, we can talk about those.

So I look forward to meeting all of you.

I have a number of other meetings scheduled with business leaders and uh community leaders throughout throughout the uh the uh upcoming months, and so uh I just look forward to getting out and interacting and talking with people and learning about your hopes and aspirations for our great city.

And so with that, I also want to add that this afternoon at our council work session uh we had a presentation uh regarding the uh impact of some of the uh you know the uh uh executive orders uh that have uh been issued by the president and how they may impact our community.

Uh we certainly have various federal funds that that uh we have for various programs as well as many of our services that at some point, either if it's a pass through from the state eventually may come down to uh programs that are important here in our community.

And I wanted to ask the city managers to take a few minutes to kind of do a recap of the meaning and presentation we had earlier, just to talk about how some of those impacts uh could have uh uh impact Hampton, I'm sorry, impact Hampton, and what our plans are for trying to uh be prepared for any changes that uh may affect our budgets here.

So, city manager.

Certainly, thank you.

And um, I would suggest that anybody who's interested in this topic, and hopefully everybody is would go back and watch the session because there's was a lot more detail than I'll be able to do in a quick summary.

But um, as you likely heard, there were um executive orders and and memos freezing federal funds.

Uh, there were challenges in the court, there were suspensions, there's there's been all sorts of of information going back and forth, and frankly, we're still in a fairly unclear environment as it relates to a lot of that information.

Although most of our operating budget is dependent upon local and state resources, we have been very successful in getting a lot of federal grants.

Uh, federal grants for everything from transportation projects uh to most recently we got a 20 million dollar EPA grant to deal with flooding in the Aberdeen Gardens area.

And we had to really assess each of those grants to see whether we thought they were at risk for some of the pullbacks that President Trump has indicated that he would like to pull back.

So really hadn't been a lot of discussion about pulling back on transportation projects, but something like our 20 million dollar flood mitigation program grant um out of the EPA and uh and what was called a communities of change climate change program uh kind of fits in some of the things that he's talked about.

So, what we've discussed with council is doing a risk assessment on each of our federal grants and making sure that if we think it's a high risk for being pulled back, like that EPA grant, we do not spend money until we get clarity that we absolutely have the authority to spend it.

Um, and other cases like our our road projects, which are on the other end of the extreme, um, going ahead and can continuing to submit reimbursements, and as long as we're getting reimbursements, continue to move forward.

We've asked every federal agency for which we get a grant from to give us clarification as to whether or not they believe that they have authority to process our reimbursements and to authorize us to continue to spend.

In some cases, we've gotten an affirmative okay.

A good example we talked about this afternoon is we have money from the Defense Department, um, Office of Defense Communities to do a joint project with Langley Air Force Base, uh, the Fort Monroe Authority and our Hampton Police Division for an enhanced training facility and an indoor firing range.

We did get confirmation from that agency that we could keep spending.

In other cases, um, like Department of Energy, uh, we got a blanket email that went to all localities not to spend any money from the Department of Energy.