Yeah, everybody.

All right, good morning, everybody.

And uh we have a similar all of our team and council members here to uh begin our budget retreat and uh spend the day working on you know going through all the priorities that uh we have for us.

Uh so before we get started, I'm gonna ask the clerk to call to roll.

Councilman Bowman, present Vice Mayor Brown, Councilwoman Campbell, present, councilwoman Faraby, present, councilwoman Harper, present, councilwoman Muggler, and Mayor Gray.

Present.

And uh just as a reminder, um all your mics are hot, your red lights are on them, so just uh be mindful of that with all you know your sidebar conversations and everything.

And so with that, I'm gonna turn it over to uh the city manager to uh introduce uh you know the people that are assembled here this morning and uh get us ready to get started with the first item on the agenda.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Um you all are old hats at this by now, you did it last year.

Um so I don't need to do a lot of introduction about what we're trying to accomplish today, but we do appreciate you dedicating a full day to your annual budget retreat.

Um we will be doing um some polling throughout the morning as we go through different presentations.

You have the polling devices at your locations, and as you know, we reviewed with each of you in advance how we would do the polling.

I do want to stress for the public that may be attendance or subsequently watch our video tape that when we do polling, both here and in the public, it's preferential polling, it's not voting.

Uh we don't want people thinking you all are voting absolutely on the budget before a budget hearing or anything like that.

Uh we are one of the few localities that does a lot of extensive outreach to the council and the public before a manager's recommended budget.

Some cities just put out a manager's recommended budget and then the council and the community process it after that.

But we've long believed that we build a better budget for you by engaging you all up front and involving the public up front, and we take the preference polling we get from all of you, um, that being the council and the community to try to bring blend a city manager's recommended budget that will best reflect the priorities that you on their behalf and they have reflected to us.

Uh we care deeply about these priorities.

I want to be clear, this is not a waste of time, but we have to be clear for the public and for legal reasons that you are not voting and making decisions on the budget at this time.

You're giving us guidance so we know how to shape the budget in a way that you all are most excited about.

Um as we've discussed um in advance, we have a variety of presentations today, some of which will require uh polling questions, some of which are just for informational purposes to give context.

We're gonna kick off that context with the presentation by Deputy City Manager Brian DeProfio just to remind you and the public of some of the issues we're facing this year, and then we'll roll right into starting to look at our real estate and personal property and other revenues.

So with that, I'll take it off to Brian.

Thank you.

Um each of you just before I I get started.

You all have a uh binder in front of you.

Then the binder has all the presentations that we're gonna be going through today, and in the front cover, it has the detailed agenda for today for today's meeting.

And so if you want to follow along or refer back to any of the information that's presented, it will be in your binder.

Um with that, I'll I'll get started.

I'm gonna go through this relatively quickly.

As Mary had said, um, I'm gonna basically um do a high-level overview.

There's some additional detail under tab one, um, which is where my presentation is, some of the information that we went through last year.

Um we've updated all of the numbers that we went through last year, um, but you know, they really hadn't materially changed, and so we didn't feel the need to go through them again this year.

And as Mary said, y'all have been through this before and and and you're familiar with that information.

Um, but today's agenda includes I'm gonna go through as Mary said, uh some brief background, and then we're gonna turn it over to some other presenters to go through the property tax, real estate tax programs, and and information on those two taxes, the property tax and real estate tax, of course, are our two biggest uh local revenues for our budget.

Um, and then we'll turn it over to our our interim director of public works to take us through the public works fees, um, and then we'll be going through some other program fees, more specifically the the school age program, and then we'll be doing uh we'll we'll go through compensation and employee benefits, and we'll be asking you to rank some of those options, and then we'll go into the variable that you wouldn't need to in the budget.

So that's the agenda for today's meeting.

Um the key challenges that we we anticipate having this year that we see having this year are whenever we have a new governor or new administration coming in, they have new priorities, and so there are some things that are coming out of uh the current um administration and and what the General Assembly is doing up in Richmond that may have an impact on our budget either in this year or in future years.

One of those is collective bargaining.

It looks like that one the greatest impact may be in future fiscal years.

There may be something that we might need to do this year in preparation for that.

Um and we will uh work through that as we go through our budget process this year.

Um they also are looking at things like medical leave and uh you know paid medical leave and and zoning impact.

And so there are a variety of things that we're monitoring at the state level that may impact our budget, and we'll we'll we'll address those as they come uh as they become more solidified.

Um we also each year, as you know, we deal with various state unfunded mandates.

The one that has been growing most aggressively in recent years is the disabled veterans tax relief program.

This year, as you'll see in some of the later presentations, it's looking like it's going to grow by about 3.4 million dollars in terms of the impact on our budget above what we budgeted last year.

And that's equivalent to roughly two cents on our real estate tax rates, basically uh about uh three percent um civilian wage increase, a little bit more than than that.

And so that's um that's a big impact that we're going to have, and the full cost of that is going to be 13.7 million dollars.

I think this is a program that everybody supports.

We've been working to try to get the state to help provide some funding to offset some of those impacts that we feel locally as a community where we have a lot of veterans who come here and then retire here, it really disproportionately impacts the city of Hampton and many of the localities in the Hampton Roads region.

Um we also continue to have federal policy tax impacts to our budget.

During the course of fiscal year 22, we've seen some decrease in federal travel, which has impacted some of our revenue streams.

Um then, of course, you know, the key pillars of our local uh regional economy are federal um installations like NASA, like Langley Air Force Base, um, and the port, which of course, you know, with with the tariffs and the changing in trade policies uh may be impacted.

Um then uh some other big drivers in our budget really are our compensation.

Back in January, we uh made um significant um increases to our public safety pay scales in order to make sure that we can continue to retain um high quality staff there and be competitive amongst the other cities in the region.

Um we also need to continue to provide competitive wages for our civilian workforce.

And we've seen health insurance uh and and Carl Daughtery, our chief financial officer will go through the health insurance impacts.

It looks like that's going to be about a 13.2% increase in our health insurance um costs this year, and uh so that's another big um expenditure driver that we're looking at.

And then we also update uh um renewed our body camera contract with the vendor this year.

That's gonna have a $650,000 impact on our budget, and that's an example of some of the things that we're looking at on the operating side of the budget.

And then in increased infrastructure maintenance costs.

I mean, those costs have accelerated quite a bit over the last few years, and we're continuing to deal with that as a uh as a challenge in our budget process.

In terms of our revenue growth, and and you'll again see more information on this as we go through the agenda today.

Um, real estate property values continue to grow, so that's good news.

Um they're growing a little bit slower than they have in in more recent years.

So they're starting to slow down, and I think we've anticipated that over the last few years because of the big run-ups that we've had there.

Um but that's going to be uh that's gonna be something that that we'll look at in the budget process.

And then also personal property tax values have really kind of looks like they're they're they're being flat, um, and you'll see some additional information on that.

Um we also continue to have an evolving tax base that is more more and more dependent on multifamily and residential um components of our real estate tax base, and uh you know, because the commercial environment continues to change as the office market remains um soft and as uh people are moving more to bricks and mortar uh are moving more to online retail versus bricks and mortar retail.

Um a couple other things at the state level, just that we're keeping an eye on on the revenue side is um if the state legalizes the uh sale of of marijuana, then there may be a local marijuana tax that could potentially be positive on the revenues.

There's also a safe communities grant that we thought we were going to get in FY26 that um that uh ultimately was vetoed by the governor, and we're hopeful that we'll get that this this upcoming fiscal year.

So those are some things that may be positive on the revenue side.

Um the bottom line as we see it today in terms of our budget is that we we expect the budget to be you know tighter this year than we have than it has been in recent years with with some limited ability to maybe add some new budget initiatives and as we go through the budget process and identify um our uh our full revenue projections, we'll have a better sense of that.

We'll have a better sense of that.

But uh but that is just a quick run through of some of the big picture issues.

We want to make sure that we um covered at the as we start the uh retreat today.

I'm happy to take any questions if anyone has any questions from council members.

Okay, all right, thank you, Brian.

Thank you.

Um I will hand it over to Michael Harris, our commissioner of revenue, and we'll take it through the next item on our agenda.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Thank you for today presents to you.

Um 40 years, my senior chief deputy now just give me up to speed on where we are.

Um, today we're going to talk about our real estate tax relief program for the elderly and disabled, uh, disabled veterans program that we call our D exemptions.

Um for our real estate reduction program by and disabled, um, we have the next week.

This word.

So we have two options.

We have a local option and a state mandated option.

In our local option, what you'll see is we have a freeze, a deferral, an exemption that was grandfathered.

Uh, the local option is given uh we're given uh authority to do this by uh the state code of Virginia, and here what we have done is uh done everything, but the exemption exemption we had up until fiscal year 2014, and that was due to the disabled veterans exemptions that we were given, so we were able to accommodate that.

So we grandfathered anybody that was in the program as of July 1 2013.

One more to our local option, these are the requirements to qualify.

Um, the applicants must own the real property, it must be uh their sole residents, not primary residents.

The owner has the 65 or older, and they must be permanently and totally disabled.

Uh, additionally to that, the maximum household income is not more than 67,000.

If you remember from last year, this was 64,000.

But uh I mean sorry, city council years ago encapsulated into the local code to allow for cost of living adjustments, and so that's where you see the increase from 64,000 um to 67,000, just so commissioners don't have to come back and ask for adjustments when it comes to the program.

Additionally, uh the net worth can't exceed 200,000.

Obviously, we have 10 acres of land is what we allow as well, and there's exclusions for up to 7,000 for other persons living in the household.

One point uh yeah, please.

Additionally, talking about a tax freeze program, uh what we do here is freeze your tax rate at a certain at a certain rate for a given amount of years so that person doesn't have to uh worry about increases and those periods are different.

And so if the tax rate goes up, uh tracks with you paying taxes at that rate, if it goes down, it follows to the lesser rate.

Other thing we do is a deferral, um, and that's you postpone all or a portion of your tax um until at the time of sale, or uh if that person passes on, then it goes to the estate and they have to pay.

But the good part about this is there is a one-year uh waiting period or one year holding period, so there's no penalties or interest.

But what the effect of that is is really when a person defers the estate will have to pay taxes, or we will have to sell it to get the taxes back for the city.

Uh, right now there's no options for real estate uh exemption for uh our senior citizens.

Um, once again, like I said, and we'll talk about that in a little uh in a second.

Um that was ended in fiscal year 2014.

So here is our in uh exemption that was grandfathered in, these are the income levels for the persons that qualified at that time, and obviously it's a tiered system.

And what you'll see on the next slide is as the exemption, the exemption uh people that were in the program, as you see as time has gone on, less parcels are in the program, so that tax impact has decreased, but all of the other programs that we still have operating from our freeze and deferral, you will see there is an increase.

But all of the other programs that we still have operating from our freeze and deferral, you will see there is an increase.

And right now we're about 1.1 to 4 million in the program.

But as we post credits and make adjustments, we do that throughout the year with post credits to the treasurer.

Um that varies as homes enter and exit the program.

Next, I want to talk about my uh the tax exemption for disabled veterans.

Um in 2011, uh legislation was approved by the Virginia General Assembly to exempt certain disabled veterans and their surviving spouses to allow for their principal place of residency to be exempted from taxes, and what that is is a veteran can own multiple homes, but it really is their principal place of residence.

Um so the qualified veteran to qualify must have a certified letter from the U.S.

Department of Veteran Affairs.

Uh they must be permanently disabled.

So that's at either a hundred percent uh compensation rate or a hundred percent due to uh individual unemployability.

Also, uh addition to that the surviving spouse um can qualify for the exemption as well as long as they don't remarry or they continue to occupy that real property as their primary residence, and then in 2015, if you remember there was legislation proposed by the Virginia General Assembly that allowed for the surviving spouses of uh veterans or um armed force or armed service members killed in the line of duty to qualify for that same exemption.

Um so there are still certain qualifications they must meet, and what happens uh when they come to our office is they provide the letter, there's some background information we have to do.

Right now we're getting about 80 to 100 uh applications per month, so it's very rigorous.

Um we have to do a lot of background information to make sure uh that these persons are this their primary place of residence, or they don't have other residences, they're qualified as well.

So it's a very tedious process at this point.

Um, but you know, we're making do the best that we can, and we know it has a big impact on um our real estate revenue.

I want to take you to this chart.

Uh, when this was first enacted in fiscal year 12, you see that the impact on our residential uh tax amount was about one percent.

Now we're at about seven percent this many years later, and it's only increasing.

And so, what that is on the statewide level, when we first instituted this program, it was an impact about eight million statewide when it comes to uh revenue loss.

But what according to the Virginia Municipal League and the reporting that we're getting statewide right now, we're projected at 400 million uh tax loss statewide, and so you're seeing about 70 to 100 million in the last three to four years of tax revenue loss across the state.

Uh but Hampton, since it has uh a high concentration of veterans, we're one of the top three or four that's impacted the most.

So as you see, fiscal year uh 26, there's you'll see two numbers.

We estimated that it's gonna be around 10 million because the way we were tracking at about 1 million per year increase.

But what we've seen and what our projections are uh for the end of this fiscal year will be about 12 million.

So we're actually two million off in our projections just because of the exponential gross of revenue loss.

And so right now, uh our estimated fiscal years for 27 is 13.7 million, and based off what we see now, that may be a little bit low, but that's the numbers that we have.

But Richmond continues to uh look at options um to supplement funding for localities because we put this bill obviously is a state uh unfunded mandate.

Um there's a proposed Senate bill to start a working group to look at the revenue impact from this exemption.

However, I'm not sure where that lies at this point, but we'll continue to track uh continue to track this.

Is there any questions?

Um Vice Mayor Brown, yeah.

Mr.

Commissioner, thank you uh for the report.

Just back on the deferral uh program.

Uh and and if someone unfortunately is deceased, they had been on this world program.

Does that probably have to be um a property of an heir?

Um because you mentioned that those taxes would have to be paid.

Is that accrued over the many years of deferral?

And and and and and how soon does that have to be paid?

Okay, so going back to be a burden.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Yes, so that is accrued over the time.

So if you deferred for 10 years, five years, four years, those taxes build up, and that goes to the estate that will have to pay it at that time.

But like we said, there is a one-year buffer period for paying that without penalty or interest, uh, but it still leaves it up to the estate to pay that.

If not, um our beautiful treasurer there will go and uh sell the property and then pay our taxes, and then the rest will go to uh the heirs.

So they got a year to kind of work through things and okay, good.

Thanks.

Thanks, appreciate it.

Any other questions?

Questions uh councilwoman Mugglin and Councilwoman Hall.

Thank you.

Um the current status of this particular program for first I guess these is for seniors or disabled.

Um how many residents do we have um taking advantage of this exemption?

If you get back to that slide, the numbers.

So if you see on this slide, you can tell how many parcels that we have in each of the parcels.

That's how you can tell.

And as you can see, the exemption is going down each year as you would expect.

Um the deferral actually is increasing more than the freeze.

The freeze is kind of you know staying consistent, it seems, but the deferral um, you know, does increase more.

So it's based on the number of parcels, that's how many applicants do you have.

So you you don't have any new participants coming in, correct?

For the exemption.

Only for the exemption for the freeze and deferral, yes, they can come in.

We send these out late on May, and they have until August to come in and apply, and we go through the paperwork to make sure, but yes, we are accepting applications for the freeze and deferral.

Okay, okay.

Thank you.

Council Mahar.

Um would this be an estate man mandate and because our area, of course, is fluctuated with veterans.

Um doesn't surprise me that we're the top three or four.

Has there been any discussion with um other commissioners or or even treasures around the the state to discuss how maybe the state can provide some relief or letting them know how this is affecting our real estate here um taxes here?

Yes, the commissioner association constantly speaks on this.

We have meetings about this all the time about the revenue impacts.

That's how we know we're one of the most impacted.

Um last year I know there was there was a bill put on the floor.

Well, sorry, put in committee that died in the committee that was focused on maybe putting caps based off the median average um uh property value uh based off your locality, uh that died in committee.

Um I'm not sure if that was put up to uh this time again, but we do know, like I said, there was a center bill put on for a working group to see what the impact is, and you know, things move slow in Richmond, so we kind of have to wait.

Um another point is it was encapsulated in the constitution, so therefore it has to go through through pretty much election cycles for anything to change, and so what we're looking at is the fastest that if anything could get done, if it got put into um put to a vote would be at least two election cycles.

So uh, you know, any time someone's tries to touch it, it dies in committee at this point.

But um, hopefully there's some things we can do in our locality kind of offset some things, and uh I'll be submitting a memo to city council uh concerning that in the future.

And if I mayor, I'll supplement in addition to what the commissioners are doing, the city managers have been very active and advocating on this issue.

Um I was invited to speak to it at the Hampton Roads caucus meeting before the session began about the impact on budgets, and we were very clear that we don't begrudge you know, people who have served our country getting this support, but it's unfair that there's disproportional impacts for localities like ours that um have a higher percentage of veterans.

Um when um Councilwoman Mugler was delegate, she sponsored a study that was well, she tried to get a bill done, it got referred to a study at the Commission of Local Government, um, and they actually recommended a couple different options to helping localities that were disproportionately impacted.

Um the recommendation that the managers have have largely went back to that came out of the commission on local government was that any locality that was spending more than one percent of their uh their had more than one percent.

So you can see I forget the number we're up to now.

Seven.

Um we are we're really really high.

And so the idea was a state would every locality would be expected to cover some, because we should.

You know, and maybe that's a one percent threshold, but any locality that was above one percent would get supplemental assistance for that piece above one percent.

So that's what we're trying.

I know that Mayor Gray brought it up at the Virginia Municipal League as well for the um elected officials to try to take a position.

And following that, VML invited uh me and um Bob Crumb to come talk to them.

So I'm glad the commissioners are working.

I think this is something that requires working at every angle and us all sort of bringing awareness to it.

Uh we're not the only, as as mentioned, we're in the top four, but there's some other places that are really disproportionately impacted as well.

And it's growing so much now that even communities you wouldn't think would be impacted are starting, it's starting to get their attention.

Um we were basically told this year was not going to be the year to get the financial assistance because it's the you know, where we fall in the biannual budget, but there's hope that maybe next year at the start of a governor's term where she gets to put in a full two-year budget, there might be a pathway to revisiting that commission on local government report.

Uh councilwoman Faraby.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Um, I just wanted to make sure that I understand how the constituents will be made aware of the tax relief.

I believe Miss Beaver just um mentioned it, but I just wanted to make sure that I heard it correctly.

How the constituents will be made aware, the residents will have Hampton will be made aware of the tax relief um.

Program itself.

Yes, well, it's on our website.

Um it is on our website that it's offered.

Um we do send out applications to the ones you know we haven't filed because every you know people's things change each year.

But um, I know uh like I said, it's on the website, we put it out there, we send applications out.

Um I know in the past we've gone to areas such as the senior citizens to talk to them about these programs.

So we do make people aware based on uh how we can.

Yeah, and what we do too is active is when people come in, we definitely let them know what they qualify for as well.

Okay, I'm just so just to point, um thank you.

I think the tr treasurer had the the whole program, all the programs are laid out on the tax deal in the back of the tax.

Thank you.

That and that was I was where I was kind of headed because the average person um we had a lot of retirees because of the federal um situation with um offering the early retirements and such, and I don't know with all of everything that's been going on if a someone that will be a casual observer would know to go to the website to check into that.

And I can understand that it's like um the treasurer said we do put it on the back of our bills, and our office has done some public going out to senior citizens in in certain places like the senior citizen centers to let them know that this program is available.

Thank you.

Vice Mayor Brown.

Yeah, also it would be beneficial too that when you come into the commission's office or the treasurer's office, then maybe that's a stand-up banner that would advertise some of the programs that folks are eligible for.

That would be helpful.

The other thing, the question goes back to disabled uh veterans who have the tax exemption.

Uh that that's also for the spouse, correct?

Yes.

Okay.

Uh once the spouse and the the veteran uh deceased, does it any member of the member of the family?

Oh, no.

No, it doesn't try to do this.

So it stops there.

Yes.

Okay.

Um you mentioned a number that got my attention.

Well, these two numbers.

You said that we had we get 80 to 100 applications a year for the month.

A month for the veterans exemption.

Yes.

Um and what percentage of those get approved with that that meeting, as I'm assuming I don't know what a veteran has to present in order to get the exemption, but uh I'm assuming that they will come with whatever certifications in need.

So do all of them or majority of them.

What percentage are approved?

Yeah, the majority about 90 percent that we see get uh get uh approved, and now it is a process.

We try to give ourselves 60 days to do that, and so what they do is bring a certification letter from the VA.

You also have to prove that that's their primary place of residence.

Because we have some veterans that are transient, um, and you know, they may have multiple properties in multiple states or have multiple properties in Virginia or even in the locality.

So we try to do that research, and so it's it's time intensive to do that if you can imagine that we're getting 80 to 100, and so we spend a lot of time on DV exemptions, probably our number one, I would say uh busiest section or department within the Commission of the Revenues Office at this point.

Like I said, it's only exponential growth that's increasing those those things increase.

Um and I didn't I think I mentioned it to um uh some of the people in this uh some of our city finance, but what I believe, and this is just a theory is what we're seeing this exponential increase.

There was an influx.

Um there's about an eight to ten percent influx back around 9-11, around 2002, 2003 uh veterans join the military.

If you look at that time now, they're retiring, and so now you're gonna see an influx of retirees that are qualifying for the DV exemption.

Also, as veterans get older, um, they qualify for more things based off injuries, and so that also uh adds to it as well.

So I think that's affecting the numbers.

I don't have hard numbers on that, but that's just a theory of time.

And the uh other question is I I have heard that it is there are situations where a veteran uh qualifies for 100%, but at some point down the road that status changes, and the veteran veteran is no longer 100%.

So how do how do how are we able to find that?

And I'm assuming that if the veteran the status changes, they no longer qualify for the exemption.

Is that correct?

How do we how do you all find out about that?

You're correct, mayor.

And one of the things that we do know that in the cases of if there's fraud or something of that nature, then there may be a report that we um then the VA looks into it and sees if that and and reassesses the veterans um percentage.

We don't have a direct um line to the VA to say when this person comes on and off because they're not mandated to report that, and that's some of the issues that we kind of run into.

What we run into when we look at reassessments is if someone sees that person's not staying there, another someone moves, and so we have a lot of self-reporting by citizens that we catch.

Um or if some we we've even seen things of this nature when veterans come in and submit their applications, um, there's variations in letters and where they come from, and so we have to really be time intensive on what we do.

But there is no no mechanism that's uh codified that says that the VA has a report to us when someone changes their disability rating.

So it's very time intensive to be able to do that to find out when people come on and off.

But for the most part, when someone's a hundred percent total disabled, they keep that, but there are certain cases where veterans um percentages decrease.

I was just gonna clarify, and you may have mentioned that when you said there's no state code mechanism, but um if I'm not mistaken, like the elderly tax rate they have to apply every year, uh there's no requirement.

I realize at 2,600, you know, uh parcels, it would be a lot of work.

Is it an issue of workload or is it an issue that we're not legally allowed to ask them to keep, you know, to reapply each year to verify that they have not lost their status?

I believe that we could do that.

Um we don't currently do some other jurisdictions can see.

I thought some jurisdictions were doing that.

So I mean I realize it would be a lot of work, but if if we thought there was a value in doing that, you know, to have that extra staff to make people re-up every year.

I would just wanted to know could you legally do it?

That is an option we're actually looking to because some of the other jurisdictions do that.

Um recertify or ask to recertify every single year.

I guess the VA is not mandated to report changes.

Could you maybe find out from your peers when you get a moment, you know, when you get a chance, those that do it, do they find that people drop off?

I.e.

is it worth it?

Right.

I mean, if everybody gets recertified, then it's a lot of work for no avail.

But if they are picking up, you know, a fair number of people who may be dropping off, it might be worth it.

So maybe those that have already done it can be a guide for us as to whether we should do that or not.

And we'll we'll get back to you on that.

And I believe we have 2,000 plus DVs on this right now, and maybe more.

I I can't remember the last number, but we'll get back to you on that.

And and I'll add that I I don't know if if you all in your commissioner's group have had any conversations about whether you should pursue some amendment to the code that would uh allow for uh I guess a reapplication every year, every two years, or some way that you could kind of put it back on the person who has the exemption to at least come forward and have to present that they are still 100%.

I'm not aware of that specific change.

I think the main specific change was trying to get caps or limits on on the amount of the uh average uh average uh assess to real estate per locality, but it's something to note.

Um we'll definitely take that down.

All right, any other questions?

Council members.

All right, thank you, Mr.

Commissioner.

All right, thank you.

Uh now I have another presentation.

We're gonna go into our personal property uh tax assessments, a personal property.

We're gonna focus on our vehicles that are located in Hampton.

Um so for our personal property valuation, we use JD power as a pricing guide, and in some cases we use a percentage of cost price.

Uh, we generally have to do the percentage of cost price when there's a car that's not a JD power guide, um say it's a Lamborghini or something of that nature, or or something that's not listed there, or exotic car, or just a brand new car that may have come out.

And so we uh allow by the code uh 58.135 to use uh percentage of cost price.

Um what we do when we do our assessments, we assess at 100% of the clean loan value.

That basically is the max allowed.

That's a max amount a lender generally will pay or willing to finance for something that's clean, low mileage, and well maintained.

Umce again, this valuation guide is used across the localities in Virginia.

Going back to what I just discussed, section 58.135.

Um, like I said, we use JD Power to do that that uh analysis.

Um, and once again here in Hampton, we use the clean loan value to come up with what the amount to be taxed is going to our new vehicles.

Um basically with our new vehicles, what we're seeing is uh a trend.

Um we're still recovering from COVID.

If you see the sales numbers here, um there's some equalization.

I think we're on target to reach back to about 16 million in sales.

Um we may not reach pre-COVID numbers ever again, um, but what we're seeing is the new vehicle sales are recovering.

Um there's that's based off of a lot of things, and I'll talk about that in other slides.

So if we look at new vehicle prices, we took some snapshots of a Honda CRV in 2024 and 25 and 26, and a total yoda Camry, 24, 25, and 26.

Um, at one point we saw the prices going down on a hundred CRV, but if you look at the Toroto Camry, uh you saw that the price increased this year, and this is due to market volatility right now.

We don't know how the tariffs affect everything, and then with the new ruling as well.

Uh we just don't know what what those what that equalized to do over this last fiscal year.

Uh at one point we were seeing that new vehicle prices were actually dropping consistently, um, but that has kind of steadied out at this point.

And for our used vehicle market, um again, uh so we see several factors that are affecting it.

Uh new vehicle inventory is increasing, uh, mainly because there's new incentives to buy all kinds of things instituted as far as well, federal and some state incentives, and then the uh manufacturers themselves are providing incentives, and so that affects our used car market.

Um we also see that the average price of the use uh our used car vehicle price was 29,571.

And then once again, this used vehicle market.

At one point, the sales were going up with used vehicles, and there was some fear that used vehicles were overpriced, especially during COVID.

Um, but right now we're seeing some type of some type of equilibrium, but once again, like I said, this is uncertain.

Uh, it's very uncertain market uh with the tariffs and the new ruling.

Uh now to speak on use vehicle depreciation.

Um obviously, as vehicle value depreciates or basically the value is dropping of the vehicle.

Um, we have a lower assessment, and so that's where you see our in our personal property book that those values on those cars go down.

The goal really is to make sure we offset that with new vehicle sales, and right this year, um, and I'll get to that in a second, but we take in several factors of the vehicle when we look at depreciation.

We look at the condition of the vehicle, mileage, um, and then also the economic climate determines a lot as well.

Um, but um basically with any used vehicle within the first year, there's about a 15 to 20 percent uh drop in value, and so that affects our assessment.

So every year um we have to have a personal property book we provide to the treasurer by April 1st, and but throughout that year, we're constantly uh amending what we have in our personal property book.

Um, so what we do is run roughs, and so those are just snapshots in time of what's on our personal property book.

If you look at 24 and 25 and 26, what we try to do is take take them around the same time.

You see February 10th to 24, February 1st to 25, and then February 12th of this year, running a rough.

Um, we looked at the number of vehicles and the assessed value, and we think this year, just out based off projections, we're gonna be pretty flat in our our taxable um revenue from those vehicles.

And so uh the good thing is we're not decreasing and we're tracking with other localities that either is it's um right flat or maybe a one percent increase.

So that that's okay for us, I should say.

People switch vehicles and exchange vehicles and sell them.

It's all effects our personal property books.

I did have a number written down that came and Karen can remind me of the when it comes to our our disabled veteran exemptions.

Well, we have two exemptions.

We actually do prefer personal property.

We have our disabled veterans exemption that state mandated, and then we have a local option that is one percent one penny per million assessment.

So effectively that's two vehicles that our 100% disabled veterans are getting, and that affects our tax.

And I think the combined the combined amount of that is at 3 million at this point.

So we have about a three million dollar loss in personal property as well.

Once again, um with this presentation, we didn't include any of the other supplementals through the year, but those are just snapshots in time, but just based on predictions.

Looks like it's going to be consistent with other years.

All right, I think that's uh thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, um, we're gonna talk about the real estate assessments, and we have with us our city assessor Libby Griebel to do that presentation.

Um, and as you know, uh, because I mentioned it to you in advance.

We'll also be doing this presentation tonight on television for the public.

Um, as you can see, we are recording this meeting, it's not live streamed.

Um, citizens can access the video if they want, but most people will not access a video and watch eight hours of a retreat, but they will watch the council meeting and see this presentation, which is why we are repeating it this evening.

But for your work today, it's important to have the context of how our largest uh revenue source is growing uh this year.

So with that, we're glad to have Libby uh make up a uh presentation on expected land book changes.

I think value assessed value is great.

Thank you.

Thank you all for the opportunity here today to present the real estate assessments.

Mayor Gray.

Vice Mayor Brown, Mary Bunting, City Manager.

You might need to move the mic and council.

Yeah, thank you.

Um I'm gonna begin by just to show the transfers that have taken place this year from 24 to 25.

You can see there has been a little a few number of transfers uh above 2024.

Qualifying sales, qualifying sales are time.

Oh sorry.

Sorry.

Um the qualifying sales are sales that include uh new construction flips, uh remodels.

It does not include foreclosures, um, bank sales, um, relative transfers, things of that nature, those types of sales that come through our office.

Uh each sale is vetted by the appraiser and determined whether or not it's a qualifying sale to determine how to compare the rest of the city to those sales.

Um foreclosure sales have remained pretty uh stable.

Um we had approximately 1112 non-qualifying sales, and again, there are sales that had incorrect data or related parties, bank sales, foreclosures.

Um none of those are included as qualifying sales.

Uh the median sale price has risen slightly.

Uh this is residential single family, includes kind of minimum and townhouses, uh, and the median this year is 300,247.

So we have seen a slight increase in the median sale price as well.

So feel free to stop me on any slide as we move forward.

If you have any questions as we go forward, um the next slide is uh shows the total assessed value.

Exempt 21% for our total assessment of 23 billion, 153, 632.7.

So it is up about 22.

Let's see, grand total in FY26 was 22.3.

It is an increase of over 870 million.

As you can see on this this slide, this just shows the assessed values from FY20 to FY27.

And the top line is the grand total assessed values.

It steadily increased.

Exempt properties like churches and schools, city, state, and federally owned properties.

Well, actually, this one is orange.4 billion and represents a 4.8% increase overall.

The change of assessment, residential, we have uh approximately 46,356 residential parcels, and we sent out 40,467 notices, or they will be going out on Friday.

As you can see, we have a total of 51,508 parcels, and so the total number of assessments that were sent out were 42,255, a little less than what was sent out last year.

The residential assessment change increased by 5% to just over.

Yes, sir.

What constitutes the difference in the total numbers are being sent out?

You got assessed.

Sorry, I can't hear you.

What constitutes the difference in total?

You had 51,000 parcels, and you send any notices to 42,000.

What's the difference in the number?

Um I haven't calculated that 51, it's roughly like not.

I don't understand what the difference is.

I'm asking why the difference.

Why is there a difference?

Well, because the notices that go out are notices of changes in assessment.

It's not just a standard notice.

Not every property owner receives a notice if their value did not change from last year.

Okay.

So it's called a notice of change, and you'll notice that on the pro on the little cards that go out, it says notices of change.

So that's a reason.

Okay.

So roughly 10,000 less people have a change.

Yeah.

Correct.

Public is need to know that.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay.

Appreciate it.

Let's see.

The residential assessment is increased by 5% to just over $13 billion.

It does include new construction and permits.

We had approximately seven new parcels were added.

That's typically for where a parcel has split and become two.

So that would increase the the count of the parcels.

The value increase of 600 614.5 million, which is approximately 21.2 million of this was due to new construction.

Let's see.

So overall residential was a 5% increase.

The residential mean value is for this year is $293,299, and a median value of $271.8.

And again, this includes single family condos, townhouses.

So it is up from FY26.

The residential change of assessment, this is by neighborhood, and when I say neighborhood slash assessment area, neighborhoods are grouped by similar characteristics, ideally by similar characteristics.

We had let's see a hundred and thirty eight.

Whoops, wrong, wrong one, sorry.

The assessment change changed that we had 138 that changed between one and five percent.

Um as you can see the over 20 percent, we had one that increased for between 16 and 20.

Um, and between 11 and 1519.

I'll show you on a map so that you can see.

I'm gonna go to the quadrants, it's easier to know to uh take a look at the northeast quadrant.

Uh as you can see the pink is the is the decrease.

Um orange is 11 to 15 percent, and so you had a we had one area that had a slight decrease in the northeast quadrant, uh, Green Hill, Little Creek, uh Heartwood area.

Um Fox Hill Road miscellaneous parcels, as you can see along along uh Fox Hill Road, they are there's an increase between 11 and 15 percent.

The majority one to five percent is in the green.

We did have over 20 percent.

Um I don't see any in this particular area.

This is the southeast quadrant.

Again, you see the pink is the decrease.

Uh you see over there over 20 percent is Thimble Shoals Court.

Uh that particular assessment area did increase uh significantly this year.

Um we did have some 16 to 20 percent over on uh the far left of the southeast, which was um Pixford's Newton, which is down near Armstrong School.

This is your Southwest Quadrant, and again you can see the decrease was the Brogdon Road, Woods Lane area.

Uh we did have an increase of 11 to 15 percent of in the orange, which is the Lynn Haven area, Mary Peak, uh Powton Park, Suburban Parkway, Park Place, uh Middleboro, and Bell Street.

Lynn Haven Shores increased 16 to 20 percent, which you can see is is in the blue, and finally the northwest quadrant.

Again, we see the the pink, which was again the Brogdon uh Woods Lane area showing up here as well.

The Lynn Haven area is in orange down at the very bottom, and the waterfront in Riverdale had a significant increase, 16 to 20 percent.

So I'd be happy to go back through either one of these quadrants if you have any questions.

No questions.

Okay.

Moving forward.

Uh multifamily uh assessment change in FY27.

We had three increased uh parcel counts, and a value increase of 6.4 percent.

Um, and that's all of our all of our multifamily.

Our commercial assessment, we had an increase of 2.9 percent, and the exempt assessment change was let's see, let me get back.

I'm sorry, commercial assessment was 2.9, and the exemption, the exempt assessment change, these are exempt parcels, federal, state, um, regional schools, um, CDA, anything is classified in designated properties as well, but these are parcels, these are exempt parcels.

Um it does include new construction, just over 22.7 million, and we have 1968 exempt parcels that's city-owned property to federal owned schools.

Uh we have a land use deferral uh value change, uh it uh increased by four tenths of a percent, uh change of 61.9.

And we do if you're not familiar, we have a land use uh program in the city.

The applications are available online, um as well as all of the criteria for that.

So we're deferring more market value this year as a result of the CELAC rates, which are published.

It's a state land evaluation advisory council, they mandate and publish use values for properties that are in this classification.

Um because they decrease, we are deferring more this year.

The rehabilitation tax credit change.

So that's more money for the city.

Uh it is a six year program, three years at full credit, full tax credit, and three years at half tax credit.

Uh currently we have five rehabs, uh, one multifamily, four commercial, no residential right now.

The WIS school came out, and we have two Fort Monroe parcels that are in the program that will be probably calculated and will be receiving this this year, coming up year.

Okay.

The tax credit decrease of 1.7 means the assessed value increased and means more money to the city.

The taxable value change after all of the exemptions, uh 17.2 billion mil billion, yes.

Um the tax amounts are provided by the commissioner revenue.

They're converted back to the assessed value as of 1136 when they were received.

Um the approximate FY26 tax relief is also used as an estimate for FY27 tax credits multiplied by the residential percent change, and that's our value increase of 4% in exemptions, tax exemptions.

And these are these are exemptions that include the land use deferral, the rehab, the tax credit, but also all of the commissioner revenue programs as well.

Market conditions, uh the Hampton housing market has been very competitive.

Uh homes in Hampton are receiving uh two offers on average and sell in around 35 days.

The median sale price of the home in Hampton was 280 up last month.

It was 5.5% over last year.

Um it's sort of in line with what our residential increase has been this year of 5%.

Uh there were 162 homes that were sold in December this year that were up 142 from last year, which is a 14.1% increase there.

Uh the mortgage rates at the beginning of 2025 hovered around 7% for 30-year mortgages, and as of late November fell between 6.2 and 6.3 and have fallen even more since then, hovering around the 6%.

There it predicted to remain slightly above six, although uh last night I heard that uh they're anticipating they're going to fall below the six, so we'll see.

Um contributed to a modest 4.3 percent growth in existing homes.

The Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel expansion is expected to reshape how people live, work, and move across the region.

Uh the peninsula and the South Side Connectivity will ease the chronic traffic congestion, creating stronger Hampton housing demand as community options as commuting options make neighborhoods more attractive.

Uh the long-term outlook for Hampton suggests an increase of attractiveness for the industrial logistics, heightened demand for housing, and greater access to defense-related employment positioning Hampton as an enhanced logistical hub.

This is a sample of the FY27 change of assessment notice postcard that will be going out on Friday.

Um you can take a look at this.

It does list uh down at the bottom the deadline that are available to the property owner with the office of review.

Uh, is March 30, 2026?

That's an informal office review by the appraiser.

Um, if the property owner is dissatisfied with the values that the appraiser has placed on the property, they do have a second alternative of going to a board of review made up of five citizens of the city who own property in the city.

Uh the board of review deadline is April 28th.

So those two dates are very important for the public.

Um to be sure that if you are interested in having your property reviewed, those dates uh are very important.

To be sure that if you are interested in having your property reviewed, those dates are very important.

In our records, sit down with the appraiser and go through the information that was used to arrive at the assessed value of your property.

Just because I know we have audience in the public.

So that's what the dollar eleven.

That is different than your tax rate equalization policy that council had adopted in past years.

And Carl will talk about that later.

But I just wanted for the record to clarify what the state postcard rate and is and how it's calculated.

None is calculated by finance and has is required to go on the card as you said.

Excuse me, if your value did not change from last year.

However, that does not prevent you from appealing your assessed value, even though it did not change.

So be mindful of that.

As of Monday morning of Friday morning, all of these new assessed values will be online.

They'll be available on the on the website.

So you don't have to wait for the mail to come to see if you received one.

Important dates again to remember is February 27th is when we're mailing the notices on Friday.

And the appeal forms will be available on the web that you can print out or by contacting our office.

And again, those deadlines are very important.

March 30th and April 28th, which are the office appeal deadlines and the board of review.

The IAAO is the International Association of Assessing Officers.

And it is the preeminent authority on the assessment administration.

The CEA CEAA is the highest professional honor and assessment office can hold.

And we were the first in the state of Virginia to receive this in 2011 and recertified in 2024.

And that's it.

Do we have any questions?

Anybody have any?

I would encourage you if anyone is concerned about their assessment, has any questions regarding their assessment to please contact our office.

You will be connected to the appraiser who is responsible for the assessment on your property, and they would be happy to talk with you and go over the information that they used in order to arrive at that assessment.

So I would recommend that anyone who has a concern to please call our office.

We're the ones that can help.

If there is an error, we're willing to stand and make the changes as necessary.

So I would just encourage you to call our office directly.

If for some reason you receive a recording, the appraiser will call, make what we're will return your call within 24 hours.

And it just depends on the volume of calls that we have.

They're taken in the order that they come in, and they would be happy, as I said, to meet with you over the phone or is it or in person?

Councilwoman Campbell.

Thanks, Louie.

Um so on like slide 15.

The values that are there, does that include both new and existing inventory that's in the value increase?

The value increase is it is only what's in our inventory right now.

Is that does not include anything that's coming online yet?

But anything, any new builds are also, it's not just existing inventory, existing houses.

This is all existing multifamily that we have right now.

And then on the next slide, it's got a minus seven.

So did they combine properties or did something convert to residential?

Well, we have commercial properties that will go out of the commercial property class.

They may go exempt.

They may if they sell and go and and go exempt, typically that's what's going on, is the properties going into exempt status.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Ms.

Griebel.

Nothing else?

Thank you.

So next up, Mr.

Mayor, we would have Carl Daughtery who will take this information and tell you what it means in terms of a variety of things.

As you know, we share our residential uh real estate tax growth along with personal property and utility tax revenue with the schools, and we also have a council policy on tax rate stabilization that unlike that state calculation we were just talking about with the postcard, where you take away all of the growth, it allows for some growth to deal with CPIU or resident income changes.

So Mr.

Dartrey will review all of this for you all.

Good morning, Mayor Gray, Vice Mayor Brown, City Council, City Manager, and City Attorney.

I'm glad to be with you today to talk about the real estate tax rate stabilization guideline.

Just to give you a brief background, many years ago, we were experiencing rapid increases in assessed values.

And one of our city council members was concerned about the residents' ability to pay those increased assessed values.

So he developed a budget guideline to limit the increase in real estate revenues.

And so it was applied to budget year 2007.

So this will be the 20th year that this policy has been in effect.

So I wanted to give you that context.

The real estate tax rate stabilization guideline, you it's really composed of and designed to limit the growth in real estate tax revenues based on the consumer price index or residence income, which is the greater of the two.

So sort of the cap governing amount of revenues that we would use in the budget process.

Back in May of 2013, we modified that policy to incorporate a decline in real estate.

So when we have a decline in real estate, uh to look at our real estate rate and consider an increase.

You can see at $1.14, we will generate roughly $190.9 million dollars.

Our base year and last year, our budget was $184.2 million.

Again, you see that we generate $6.6 million from those assessed values.

If we reduce the tax rate by one penny to $1.13, we will generate $4.9 million in revenues, and we will experience a revenue reduction of approximately $1.67 million.

So each penny that we reduce the real estate tax rate, we will reduce the revenues by $1.67 million.

So you can see at $1.13, we will reduce revenues at $1.7.

At $1.12, we'll generate $3.3 million, and we will reduce revenues by $3.3 million.

At $1.11, we would generate $1.6 million in revenues, and we would experience a reduction of $5 million in revenues.

And at $1.10, we experienced the overall negative revenues of $65,000, which results in a reduction of $6.7 million.

I'll stop for a second and see if you have any questions about this information.

Okay.

No questions.

Okay.

The next slide looks at the impact of a real estate tax rate reduction on public service corporation tax revenues.

These are the corporations that provide essential services to the public.

And so we at $1.14 we collect $5.8 million in revenues from public service corporations.

With a one penny reduction in the real estate tax rate, we will reduce our revenues by roughly $51,000.

So each penny reduction will result in about $51,000 reduction to our public service corporation.

So it goes from $51,000 to $1.13 down to $1.10, we see a reduction of $23,000 in our revenues for public service corporations.

So this is really information for youths so that when we have a real estate tax reduction, it impacts this revenue source for public service corporations.

When we have a reduction in our real estate rate, it impact the revenues that we pay over to the Peninsula Town Center Community Development Authority.

We provide those revenues to the CDA.

So at $1.14, we generate $2.9 million in real estate revenues from the Peninsula Town Center.

The base year amount of $831,000 is what we retain, and the CDA would receive roughly $2.1 million.

At a dollar 13 cents, the CDA would receive roughly $25,75 less.

So every penny reduction in the real estate rate will result in at $1.12, $51,000 less, $1.11, $7,000 less, and $1.10, $102,000 less.

So this will have an impact on the revenues for the CDA.

And that means that we would pee paying less money out of the city budget to the CDA.

Now this is a slide that you that's really important.

We share 61.83% of our residential revenues with the Hampton City School system.

So this allocation to the school is based on that funding formula.

At a dollar and 14 cents, the city receives approximately 4.4 million, and the schools receive approximately 2.2 million.

At a dollar 13 cents, the city receives approximately 3.5 million, and the schools receive approximately 1.5.

And at a dollar and 12, the city receives approximately 2.5 and the school receives roughly 746,000 dollars.

At a dollar and 11, the city receives approximately 1.5 and the schools 36,806.

And at a dollar and 10, the school's revenues go negative.

They would receive a reduction in their revenues from 26 of 673,000.

The city would receive 68,000.

And at a dollar nine, the revenues for both the city and schools will be negative, and at a dollar and eight, it would be it would be more negative.

So this gives the allocation based on the school funding formula was 61.83%.

Councilwoman Campbell.

Hi, thanks for the brief.

Um on slide eight, you talk about the CDA.

Is that just the PTC?

Is that just Bensley Town Center?

Are there other like is just the PTC?

Just the PTA, and that's in addition to the two cent tax or whatever they well, yeah.

We share sales meals and other taxes with the CDA.

Okay.

And then back on slide five, there's a huge jump in the taxes for 23 and 24 in the revenue.

Yes.

What happened there?

Those those are all of these numbers are based on the increase in SAS values.

So it jumped that much.

Yes, it jumped that much during those periods of time.

Back down.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay.

So this is your one of your first polling question.

Yes, so you can see over here, but also on your polling device, the first question.

Now I want to remind you we asked this question twice.

This is you know, sort of in an ideal world based upon what you know heretofore, the things that Brian talked about that we're facing and what you've heard about where we are with the revenue, where would you ideally like the real estate tax rate to be?

Now we are going to ask you again later after you've gone through all the things that you would like to see fit into the budget, like compensation and those kinds of things.

So if you will go ahead and indicate your preference here as to which one you would ideally like to be at can we tell that we have all seven?

Does anyone want to change anything before we close it?

All right, so you can see where we where we ended up.

We will move on.

Our next report is going to be from Trish Melichek on the blighted tax option.

Now, as a reminder, state code provides that we can provide a higher tax rate for blighted or derelict property.

Um there are very strict definitions about what qualifies.

So let me say that everything that we think is blighted does not qualify under the state code.

But last year we polled you and the public on this to see um if there would be a willingness to do this.

What you're going to hear is that it doesn't generate a lot of money, but it does set an expectation and put pressure on the property owner who has the blighted property to do something different.

If um Trish hasn't made it back from her other meeting, Courtney, do you want to do it or do you want us to bypass it and let her do it?

Because she's done the work on it.

Okay.

Okay, there's I know, but oh, so we would mess up the polling if we skip it.

Okay.

Okay.

Um good morning.

I am pinch hitting for Trish.

She is away at a uh different meeting this morning.

Um so as Mary said, can you all hear me?

Yes.

Yeah.

So as Mary said, we did um brief you all extensively about this last year, and so this is just a follow-up to make sure you are still wanting to go forward.

So I'll go through this relatively quickly just as a refresher.

If you would like me to um give more detail, please let me know.

Um generally speaking, the code authorizes certain localities, Hampton being one of them, to access um properties that qualify as either blighted property or properties that qualify as having a derelict building at a higher tax rate than the general real estate.

If it's a blighted property, you can go up to five percent greater than the general tax rate.

If it is a derelict building, you can go up to 10% greater than the general tax rate.

And this slide shows you what that would look like at a general tax rate of a dollar fourteen for blighted properties, you could go up to $1.20, and for a derelict building, you could go up to $1.25.

Um, these are the definitions of what constitute blighted or derelict property as Mary referenced, they are are very technical, um, and it's not necessarily just something not necessarily everything that you drive around the city and look at and think, wow, that looks not great shape.

Can we either get rid of that or perhaps uh assess that a higher tax to try to compel um some action by the property owner?

And and that's not necessarily going to be the case for this mechanism.

Um, especially with the derelict building, the there's certain timing limitations in there that really make it harder for property to qualify for that particular classification.

Um staff worked together over the past year, and and I'll have to say Trish really led that effort.

So I may, if you have detailed questions about what that process looked like, I may need to rely upon Libby and others who worked with her on it.

But generally, I think the um recommendation that staff came to was one, because there is a relatively few number of properties in the city that would qualify anyway, and I think we identified 15 properties, and because of the amount of additional effort involved to determine the classifications that the staff recommendation is to proceed with the blighted property tax designation only, and frankly, everything that would qualify as derelict would also qualify as as blighted.

Meaning to say it another way, the blighted is the broader classification.

So you're gonna pick up everything possible just by utilizing that tax description.

Then if you were to go with a derelict, if you tried to go with both, we would have to distinguish well, is it derelict or is it only blighted?

And so this way just allows us to capture everything in the um blighted classification.

Um what a condemned property do you get derelict property like if someone went in took a demo property due to you know no electricity?

Um it's not livable like on sanitary NSD condemned.

Is that a derelict proper it's it's possible or I'll go back to that definition?

Um it's possible, but as I said, I mean it's very likely that it would.

Okay.

Um but as I said, there are certain timing references in that derelict building classification that you have to meet.

So it has to be in that certain state for a continuous period of more than six months.

So what if there is some like it has to be vacant, it has to be boarded up in accordance with the bullet building code, it has to have no connection to um utilities.

If they were to change any one of those conditions to break up that six months, it wouldn't qualify for the derelict property, although it may or may not still qualify to be condemned.

I mean, the the two things are not necessarily synonymous.

Okay.

So does the code um when we notify an owner of a derelict or blighted property, does the code um give us some good enforcement tools?

So that's what this I'm sorry, the current code.

Yeah, so the this is intended to be an incentive for them because once we have designated them as a blighted property, so we're going to increase the tax rate applicable to that property for five percent.

That is intended to be an incentive for them to rectify that situation in order to lower their tax bill.

As it relates to other mechanisms to correct the blighted condition, we would be relying upon the other authority that already exists in the property maintenance code and the um tools that we already have in terms of like councilwoman Harper asked about condemning buildings, things of that nature.

This is just a different tool.

So this is all about taxes, and so it's really intended to be an incentive to someone to go in and fix the condition of your property, otherwise you're gonna have to pay more taxes.

And if I might add the clarity, the state code allows for this.

We've never done it before.

So we that's why you would need to put an ordinance in place.

The authority exists, but we haven't put it in the local code.

So what we'd have to do, that's why it says you'd have to do the code.

So you'd have to put in the authority that you already have been granted by the state, and then each year set the rate, which would be the percentage of the base tax rate.

Um councilman Boom.

Is there anything in the code or that will outline how long that property can stay in that condition, even though they pay taxes?

Is there a time frame that we will allow them to have that property?

So not in this code, because this code is only about taxes.

So if we're talking about actually changing the physical condition of the property, then we're going to the different things under the property maintenance condition, things that we already are dealing with with the team from CDC.

This is really just about taxes, right?

Gotcha.

And they have the ability to, if they disagree with our so we designated as blighted, and we're going to as provided in this statute, and we're going to designate that higher tax rate, they have the ability to appeal that, I believe, to the Board of Zoning Appeals.

And then if they actually go in and correct it enough that it comes out of the definition that the code has specified for this tax purpose, then we have to adjust them back to the regular real estate rate.

So this is not a fix-all.

This is not gonna guarantee necessarily that everyone is going to make their property in a condition that we would like to have it.

It is just another tool in the toolbox, and it's intended to be at least an incentive for someone to go in and make some improvements to correct the most obvious, you know, safety um or aesthetic concerns, or possibly sell it to somebody else who will do that.

It's really intended to incentivize people to correct the property on their own.

Um, and so as Mary mentioned, um assuming you want to move forward with this, you will have a a tax rate ordinance included as part of the budget adoption project process.

We would also do a coded ordinance as part of our city code just to establish this tax and identify the authority and and the parameters of it.

Um there any other questions councilwoman mugly?

I'm assuming that we we don't have any projections, but uh we have an idea of how many buildings would potentially fall into this category.

Okay, it's not a lot.

Yeah, I think it's not intended to we're not seeing this as a revenue generator.

Again, we're just hoping that it would incentivize some people who have some properties that are really in poor condition to make some improvements.

That's that's really the good the impetus for this.

Thank you.

So just to be clear, if we decide to go forward with when we approve the tax rate for the coming years when we would add the yeah, we would have the ordinance first because you have to do the ordinance before you do it, and then you would say you know, a dollar, whatever you decide.

I'm just going on the poll results, a dollar fourteen for general properties and then dollar fourteen plus five percent, whatever that calculation is for blighted properties.

Okay councilwoman Campbell.

Based on what you just said, so is we would would we approve both the blighted and the derelict rates?

Yes, but it'd be two separate rates.

No, no, no, no, no, we're just gonna do the blighted rate.

She asked where we're gonna do both the blight and derelict rate.

Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you meant the general property.

I I must have heard the question.

So we're not doing both, no, because of the the extra work that needs to be done and no others really.

I mean, one category covers them all, there weren't enough that would really qualify for the second tier.

Okay.

So last year when we had polled you all, you all had recommended just going with the blighted.

That was a whole at least at this time.

I when you said two rates, I thought you meant general property.

Good.

Thanks.

Thank you for catching that.

Anything else?

So we did have a polling question just to confirm that you still want to proceed.

I will say staff has been doing everything we need to do to be ready, but if you wanted to halt us, you this is your opportunity to tell us to halt.

That was easy.

We need three more people to push their button.

Push my buttons.

Sometimes you get really easy questions, like the public like this too, so all right.

We got seven.

Okay.

Okay.

I think you wanted to continue.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

So that uh with that presentation, we're going to take a uh small pause with cause, 15 minutes.

Uh got snacks and all available to you.

So uh we'll be back uh 1050.

I'm sorry, yeah, 1050.

So the next set of um topics that we do with you each year in the budget retreat.

There's a review of the what we call public works funds, um, our special revenue where enterprise accounts that's uh wastewater, uh, solid waste and stormwater.

As I as you all know, we for many of these have five-year plans, uh particularly for wastewater, where we and other localities in our region are dealing with consent orders from DEQ and EPA.

And so we projected to you and the public in the past uh what we would expect we would need to honor those commitments with the five year schedule.

Uh Mr.

Bowery's going to present the updates on all of that.

I do want to say up front that we're not looking for deviations from what we've said in the past, but we do want to give you the current information.

So with that, I'm pleased to introduce our interim public work structure, Michael Bowery.

Good morning, Mayor Gray, Vice Mayor Brown, members of the council, City Manager Bunting, and City Attorney Sid Noor.

As Mary said, I'll be reviewing the request for fee increases for the wastewater management fund first.

Uh our wastewater team's mission is to protect public health, water quality, and the environment.

Did you get a little close to the mic, Michael?

So our wastewater team's mission uh is to protect public health water quality and the environment by operating and maintaining the wastewater collection system.

We do this through minimizing sanitary sewer overflows and subsequent health impacts.

We convey wastewater from homes and businesses to Hampton Roads sanitation districts, also known as HRSD, large pipe system, and treatment plants.

Our wastewater bill has a base rate for operations and a surcharge rate for to support regulatory compliance.

The memorandum of agreement between HRSD and localities is enforced by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality through the regional consent order.

This map shows the age of the hand into Hampton Sanitary Sewer System.

As you can see from the map, the majority of Hampton's wastewater system is more than 70 years old.

By year 2040, 33% of Hampton's wastewater system will be over a hundred years old.

Just a brief wastewater fee history.

In 2010, a surcharge was added to wastewater bills to support regulatory and capital projects.

Since full adoption of the memorandum of agreement, wastewater has focused on performing the required work and drawing down cash reserves to minimize rate increases as much as possible.

Our wastewater team is prioritizing the worst defects before year 2030 as required by the regional regulatory schedule.

In 2013, 165 million was the original estimate for the known repairs needed to the wastewater system.

In 2014, the MOA was signed and the consent order was modified.

Hampton became obligated to make the repairs.

The highest priority defects to be addressed by 2030 and the remaining defects to be addressed by year 2040.

To date, the city has spent 40 million dollars on capital assets.

Just a quick recap.

240 million dollars is the most up-to-date cost estimates to repair the defects known in our wastewater system.

16 million of that will address the highest priority defects by year 2030.

The remainder 134 million will address the remaining defects by year 2040.

This is an example of one of the defects.

The image on the left, you can see the two bright spots.

This indicates a utility direction directionally bored through our wastewater system.

Uh, this allows for inflow and infiltration into the system.

Uh as you can see the image on the right using cured in place lining, the wastewater system is now completely repaired.

This is one tool we have to measure success.

If we look to the left of the graph, you see the blue and the green lines.

The blue lines indicate salinity in our wastewater system.

The green lines indicate high tide from the James River.

As you can see, the the blue is uh correlated.

You're seeing the spikes in the salinity uh in our wastewater system during high tide events.

The dark green line shows when the repairs were made.

After the repairs were made, you notice that the blue lines are no longer correlated with the the green peaks that we see in the high tide events.

This indicates that we're not getting the high tide infiltration into our wastewater system, and we have a repaired system.

Wastewater rate increased drivers.

The major driver is the cost of construction, increasing operating and maintenance activities over the past several years, and they've drastically continually increased post-COVID.

Uh national year-to-year average cost indexes are still increasing, some of them rising faster than inflation.

Other rate increase drivers include the ongoing regional MOA work needed.

HRSD continues to prioritize larger repairs, but those repairs are not dealing with the routine issues that impact our citizens on a day-to-day basis.

Hampton is responsible to respond and fix the overflows caused by roots, grease, and other failures.

DEQ continues to provide regulatory oversight.

The image on the left shows an example of something that caused the sanitary sewer overflow.

The the pipe break, that's our wastewater system.

The pipe going uh horizontal through it, that's a utility boring through our infrastructure, leading to an overflow.

The image on the right, it may be hard to see, but you kind of see the little geyser in the middle of the water, and that's a sanitary sewer overflow, one of the most recent ones we had in the woods.

Our current wastewater user fee is $2.45.

We are we are recommending a seven cent increase uh to this user fee, bringing the new total to two dollars and fifty-two cent.

Our current wastewater surcharge fee is four dollars and seventy-nine cent.

We are recommending a 14 cent increase, bringing the new total to four dollars and ninety-three cent.

Wastewater usage uh bills are based on water usage.

So if we use approximately 5,000 gallons, the average monthly bill is 48.39 cent currently.

With the projected rate increases, this would be about a dollar forty-one increase to the current monthly bill, bringing the new monthly pill to bill to approximately 49.80 cents.

Um Vice Mayor Brown.

So go back to that slide.

So the the increases are they to do capital projects?

Yes, sir.

So the user fee, uh the that uh rate is for general sewer maintenance and operations, and the surcharge fee is for the capital projects as required by the MOA.

And are you looking to replace some of the water lines as you mentioned are almost a hundred years old?

Yes, sir.

Time line for that.

Yes, so Hampton's one of the few localities that surveyed 100% of their wastewater system.

So we have known repairs documented, so we're going through and addressing those priority ones first, but then yes, yeah, exactly.

Thank you.

Yes, sir.

So, Michael, let me just be clear.

So, because when you when you look at areas that need to be repaired, so are we looking at just doing a repair or we re-replacing a certain section of the overall system of piping because it's all over 100 years old?

Yeah, so it's it's actually both.

So if the we we inspect and survey 100% of the system, so if the line appears to be in good shape, we'll make those priority repairs first and make sure the deficiencies in the pipe are fixed.

But as you said, because some of the defects in the hundred-year-old system need complete repairs, we are going through and replacing the entire system.

Okay.

All right, Vice Mayor Brown.

Another question, it may not be relative to wastewater, but is there it may be in your presentation today?

But is there any consideration to remarking the lines on the highways and streets and local streets?

Uh because a lot of the paint is you can't see at night, sometimes you can see you doing the day.

Is there any uh drawdown, not drawdown, any schedule to do that?

Yes, sir.

So that that requirement uh falls under our it's sorry, let me cut you off.

But you may not share it today, but moving forward is there some consideration for that.

Yes, sir.

We're hoping to actually be on a five-year replacement cycle.

Mr.

Mayor.

Uh Councilwoman Campbell.

So when the utilities blow through the pipe, are they responsible for paying for the repair?

Yes.

Yes.

Okay.

So if we can prove that it was the utility's fault, yes, they are responsible for repairs.

Unfortunately, some of the repairs we're finding a lot of times are it could be abandoned lines or, but yes, if we can deem the utility responsible, they are responsible for the repairs made.

Does that happen more often than not that you can prove it or we are getting a lot better with technology?

We have 811 and we have other various technologies, so the chances of it happening are lessening and lessening, but we we do see it unfortunately.

Thank you.

Okay, that's all the questions from there.

Okay.

This graph is a comparison to other localities in the area.

Just a quick uh disclaimer, this comparison does not reflect any proposed increases from other communities this year.

As you can see, Hampton does rank the top three in compared to the other areas.

One big uh reason for this is all of the localities are mandated from the memorandum of agreement to make repairs in their system.

Hampton chose to do a pay as you go method, so we pay for the repairs throughout rate increases.

Other localities may have chose debt funding options or loan amounts and things like that.

So this is one reason contributing to the amount uh compared to other localities.

So in conclusion, it is our recommendation to increase the user fee from $2.45 to support operating uh rate increases by seven cent, bringing the new total to $2.52, and to increase the wastewater surcharge fee from the current rate of $4.79 by 14 cent, bringing the new total to $4.93.

Any questions?

Uh Councilwoman Campbell.

So this one's actually for the city manager.

So in our budget that we have now, um, is there other monies that go toward the utilities, or is the repairs he's talking about fully funded through these fees?

These are generally fully funded, these these various programs.

So the fees are what pay for the repairs and the replacement of the I mean there are some things like administrative overhead that we don't bill.

So you know, Michael has the department head over wastewater, we're not allocating his time or anything like that, but the direct cost for the wastewater system are all captured with the fee.

Thank you.

So uh this is where we ask you, you know, are you comfortable continuing with the proposed increase?

Again, this is the same increase we previewed to the public before.

Um we can have no fee increase, but we would risk you know being out of compliance with DEQ.

Um if we have problems and we're not doing what we're supposed to be doing, we're gonna be subject to fines.

I'm not saying we will automatically get fines because if we you know slow our pace and we don't have problems, we might escape it.

But our concern is with the older system, we do run the risk.

In fact, we've seen some things happen from time to time as you know.

So that's why we recommend the increase.

But of course, I want to be fair and say you don't have to do it.

You it's your policy choice.

Got all seven.

Anyone want to change?

Thank you.

I think the next one's solid waste if I'm not mistaken.

Okay, the next request for fee increase is dealing with our solid waste management fund.

Our solid waste mission is to provide weekly collection of residential trash, yard waste, and bulk trash, and provide recycling uh disposal services and solid waste disposal services.

Our solid waste team offers many services to include weekly trash and bulk collection, trash and recycling disability services, container delivery and repair, special collection such as bulk and illegal dump enforcement and collections, as well as many other services listed on the slide.

Within our solid waste program, Hampton operates and maintains the Hampton NASA steam plant.

Our mission is to facilitate the incineration of Hampton's trash and generate steam that is utilized for NASA to meet energy needs.

Solid waste fee increased drivers include NASA's agreement with Hampton, the 10-year agreement we're in decreases annually.

Their contribution is leading to an increased cost to our solid waste or their decrease in contribution is leading to an increased cost to our solid waste funds.

Recycling costs.

As global demand for recycling decreases, this increases our recycling costs.

So tidewater fiber contract that we have the contract through with recycling services continues to go up annually.

In addition, increased cost and maintenance of equipment, increased cost for landfill disposal, and the cost to retain qualified CDL operators.

Steam plant drivers.

We are in the process of replacing two aging cranes.

In addition to that, we are undergoing major boiler rehabilitation.

To fund those projects, we entered a new debt net debt services for the CIP projects, totaling approximately 10.6 million dollars in 2025.

In addition to that, we have a very old steam plant.

So we're constantly having continually maintenance and major upgrades needed.

Our current solid waste weekly fee is $8.78.

We are proposing a 26 cent increase, bringing the new weekly total to $9.04.

This equates to $38.5.

That is our current rate with the 26 cent weekly increase.

The monthly total increase will be a dollar and twelve cents.

This will bring the new monthly rate to $3039.17 cents.

Because we didn't want to have big jump.

This is where our solid waste uh bill compares to the other localities.

Again, this comparison does not represent any proposed increases for other communities this year.

As you can see, Hampton does rank the number one in this category.

This is mainly due because the city of Hampton is the only locality in the area to have its steam plant.

Looking ahead, we will continue to pursue legislation modifications to the overall recycling definition.

Hampton may have the opportunity if we were to change the definition to reduce costs by processing our recyclable materials at the Hampton steam plant.

In addition, we will explore the possibility of technology to use our waste of energy steam to support power generation in the future.

Some solid waste options we could consider.

Discontinuing the residential recycling program would save approximately 1.1 million dollars a year, which is equivalent to approximately 47 cents on the weekly solid waste fee.

This would mean solid waste and recycling materials would be combined together and taken to the steam plant for incineration.

Hampton can meet its recycling requirement as required by the state with the tonnage generators generated by private haulers.

So this would be permissible.

We could reduce bulk collections from weekly to bi-weekly.

This decreases the projected solid waste fee by approximately 25 cent weekly.

We could also go a step further, reducing bulk collections from weekly to monthly, and this decreases the projected solid waste fee by approximately 35 cent.

However, there will be potential impacts.

By reducing bulk collection, we would see an increase in overall violations and the need for additional enforcement staff to manage the legal dumping concerns.

In addition, reducing bulk collections would impact the appearance of our neighborhoods and lead to increased flooding concerns.

This time I'll take any questions.

So just a couple clarifications.

As you know, we included in our legislative package the ability to count the recycling materials if they went directly into the steam plant.

The steam plant was noted significantly reduces the volume of waste to like 90%.

I think we we reduce it by 90% if I remember correctly.

Um and so that has increased the life of the landfill, which is basically what the intention of recycling is anyway.

And with the markets not being as strong for recycle materials now.

Our thought was this would allow us to save money.

Um that legislation request got defeated this year.

So we're still pending that.

So I just wanted to update you if you hadn't caught some of the legislative updates that we were not successful in getting that language approved this year.

Um so we will poll the public again to see if they're comfortable with eliminating recycling or bulk waste historically, like last year.

People did not want to change the bulk waste, but they were willing to change recycling councilwoman Mugler.

Manager, what were residents willing to um negotiate on recycling?

Not having curbside pickup.

Correct, and taking the recycles to the steam plant instead.

As individuals, no, it would be part of it basically we would just pick it up as regular trash.

But with the comfort that we're not increasing the amount going to the landfill because we reduced the waste stream by 90% at the steam plant.

That was their willingness.

I will not say it was not overwhelming.

I mean, the public was split.

There were you know, a fair I don't remember the exact percentages I can get it to you.

Maybe I can even have it later this afternoon.

Um, but as I recollect, it was something like 6040.

I mean, it was there were people who are really committed to protecting the environment and not putting it in the waste stream, but there were people who also felt like we wouldn't be putting it in the waste stream because we happen to have a steam plant that allows us to reduce it significantly.

Um I think if we didn't have that option and it was like recycling or you know, nothing, not if it all went to the landfill, it might have been very different.

Last year was the first year we poll on this question each year, and last year was the first year it tipped over to where people were willing to look at getting rid of curbside recycling.

Overwhelmingly, each year when we poll about bulk trash, people are like, we like it the way it is.

We like to be able to put it out each week whenever we want.

But as Michael mentioned, we're the only locality that does it that way.

Most localities require you to call and schedule it, or they do it very infrequently, like you get a certain number a year or something like that.

So that's why we're a bit higher, is because we offer that service, but our our residents have historically valued that.

I don't know.

We will ask again this year and of course share the results with you and see how that comes out.

And I'm sorry, could could you tell it again?

What is the downside of taking the recycle to the steam plant?

If the definition is changed, there is no downside.

We'd still get credit for the recyclable materials bring being brought to the steam plant.

Uh and I mean theoretically, you're still recycling it because you're turning that recyclable energy or recyclable materials into energy, whether that's steam or through power generation, which we're looking at in the future.

Okay.

Councilwoman Mugler.

May I just um back on that question?

Would we incur any additional fault at steam plant for recycle, you know, for increasing material?

You know, obviously it's some fresh rather than recycled.

Would it be more expensive for us to would the steam plank budget go up and have we accounted for that in the reduction?

Uh I think we can factor that into the scenario into play.

But it it is an internal service, so our solid waste fee.

We're we're already paying more money for the recyclable material go to TFC.

And as recycling demand continues to go down, the cost goes up.

So if I venture to guess right now, we would get a better rate and it would be a better cost and more advantageous to us to take it to the steam plant now than take it to a private company such as DFC.

Yes, yeah.

So let me let me make sure I'm really clear on this.

We sought the legislative change so that we could count any recycle material going there towards our reduction goals because we have reduction goals.

So without that clarification, if we don't pick up recycling at the curb side and do what we have been doing, our overall performance will go down because we will not be able to count that as reduction of the waste stream, which doesn't really make sense because we are reducing the waste stream.

That's why we were seeking that legislative approval.

Today I heard, I think for the first time, that we get sufficient diversion from the commercial companies doing recycling that we could meet our minimum requirement with the state, so that we wouldn't be in danger of incurring penalties.

There was a time where we didn't have enough commercial recycling, so we needed that to still be able to meet our minimum, because the state has minimum requirements.

You have to reduce a certain amount.

But I heard Mr.

Bowery say earlier that the commercial companies are doing enough now that we would not be in danger of being in violation of that policy.

It would still be advantageous to have the legislative change because what it's going to look like, and I don't know the exact numbers, I'm making up numbers here, but let's say we have been reducing 40% from our waste rate.

And we don't pick up curbside recycling anymore and we just go to the steam plant and we're relying on the commercial.

We may only be taking 20% out.

And so it's going to look like people will say, well, why are you not doing as good of a job?

You're you're putting more in the landfill.

And without the explanation, people may not understand it.

So the reduction that we have to make is to reduce what we're putting into the landfill.

That was the principle of the legislation.

But they they gave ways that could counted.

Okay.

So like separating recycling, which is why we all, like all the localities started doing curbside recycling.

Composting.

There are certain things that are enumerated as counting.

Okay.

Reduction at a steam plant is not considered one of the things that counts.

Okay.

So that's why we were seeking the legislative change.

All right.

Do you want to address that?

Jason and Brian were trying to weigh it up.

So City Major Bumpy is correct.

Recycling is measured in two ways.

And if you recall, council a few years ago, we changed our ordinance to require commercial recycling in Hampton.

So we take credit for that commercial recycling.

We also are part of VIPSA, which is a regional group on our side of the water that actually recycles as well.

We can actually take part of that because we're a large part of that group.

However, many of the smaller localities have now reduced recycling altogether and they use that VITSA number to meet their recycling needs.

But we do feel confident based on our commercial recycling that we can meet the state minimum for recycling if we we altogether did away with curbside collections.

But can you explain?

What do you what is meant by commercial recycling?

It would be businesses, uh anything that's not residential in Hampton.

We require uh those businesses now to report their recycling efforts.

Okay.

That probably includes multifamily as well.

It includes multifamily, um, any of the large commercial properties, any businesses we have that are required to recycle now.

Councilwoman Muggley.

Do we get any credits for conversion to energy?

No.

There are no credits.

That's what the legislation was seeking to do was to give us that credit.

Because we're we're nevertheless accomplishing the ultimate goal.

It's just it's not in a way that was enumerated as what you got credit for.

And the reason why you save so much on that is we one, you have the extra route, you know, the extra truck that picks up recycling, and two, we have the contract with the material recovery facility manager where they deal with separating it and then getting it to markets.

But again, the markets have been so weak of late that they really can't cover their costs.

When localities first started recycling, a lot of the cost was not all, it was never 100% recouped, but a lot of the cost was recouped with things like aluminum and glass.

But as more cities started doing recycling and more countries started doing recycling, you just oversaturated the market.

So a lot of times, candidly, you know, whether it's our locality or others, some things people have recycled, don't have a market and it goes to the landfill anyway.

And our assertion is by taking it to the steam plant, we're actually reducing it and doing a better job.

Because some of the things that get put in recycling, first off, you got spoiled items that can't be recycled because people don't follow the rules, and then second off, if there is no market, ultimately it's got to go somewhere.

Where does it go?

It goes to a landfill.

And so it defeats the purpose.

So we really believe it's smarter, you know, from a financial standpoint as well as from uh accomplishing the overall goal of preserving lives of landfills that we do get the credit for the steam plant.

Again, last year was the first year the public though said they were okay with this.

Um I will use Chesapeake as an example.

Chesapeake got rid of curbside recycling, and they they offered some uh drop-off locations for people who really still wanted to do it.

Now they don't have the steam plant option, and there's been a lot of pushback from people that they want to add it.

Every year it comes up, we want to add recycling back.

So that's why we were really trying to see where our public was because we didn't want our public to feel like we were abandoning environmental commitments.

As you all know, we have a very environmentally uh conscious community.

So it'll be really interesting to see if we you know, as we pull again this year, if they remain comfortable with this notion, because it it could save quite a bit of money and allow you to, for instance, preserve bulk trash, which people really value while not having to raise the rate as much by doing this.

But it is complicated topic.

All right.

Oh, one other thing, as we go through all these, and this goes back to councilwoman Campbell's question earlier, why we need some maintenance money for all of these every year, anyway.

Because these are enterprise and special revenue funds that are capturing like solid waste, all of the cost of solid waste are in this budget, except for like I said, some indirect costs.

So when you give salary increases and thing, you know, and costs go up, just like we need some real estate growth to cover salary increases for police and fire and everything else, they need salary increases.

So that's why the rate almost is gonna have to go up a little bit every year, anyway, unless you get these big like monumental changes like getting rid of curbside recycling or changing your bulk trash policy, because they've got to cover their share of health insurance increase, their share of compensation increases, their their increase in gas cost and things of that nature.

Not everybody's voted.

I don't know if anybody wants to register a vote.

We're missing one.

All right, and then we have stormwater management.

We still have oh, I'm sorry, we had these questions.

I'm sorry.

Thank you for catching me.

So just like we're gonna ask the public, we're asking you, would you like to continue the book collections as is?

Are you willing to change it to every other week or monthly?

Excuse me.

So what's the what's the savings?

So the savings if you went to every other week, I'm sorry, yeah, every other week was 25 cents on the rate.

If you went to monthly, it was 35 cents on the rate.

And then here's the question on recycling.

Do you want to continue with the curbside recycling?

Or are you comfortable with just continuing curbside recycling and just taking it all to the steam plant?

We're missing one.

All right, we have all seven.

Now we'll move on to stormwater.

Final presentation or request for a fee increase would be with our stormwater management fund.

Our stormwater team's mission is to protect public health, water quality, and the environment by operating and maintaining our stormwater system.

Our stormwater team offers many services to include capital man project management, road side, and back ditch maintenance, slope mowing, front ditch piping program, uh GIS survey, erosion sediment control inspection, as well as many others listed in this slide.

The increased drivers for our stormwater fund include the increased operating and maintenance expenses due to capital projects and future stormwater and environmental initiatives.

Uh, as we saw in our wastewater presentation, the cost of construction continues to go up.

In addition to that, reduced neighborhood flooding and enhanced stormwater systems and maintenance.

Again, this goes back to construction costs being escalated due to inflation.

Our current stormwater fee for monthly is 12.83 cent.

We are recommending a dollar increase for our maintenance cost, uh, bringing the new total to $13.83.

This is a comparison to other localities in our area.

As you can see, we're about in the mid range, but all the localities are pretty comparable within a dollar or two of each other.

This comparison does not reflect any proposed increases by other communities this year.

But we we are right on par in the mid-range.

In conclusion, it is our recommendation that we increase the current stormwater fee to $13.83 for FY27 and continue to review projection and expenses and revenues for future years to come.

So again, as was noted, we alternate each year with the dollar.

We've basically forecasted to our community over time a dollar a year, so it's manageable.

For the residents, it's always just the dollar.

For businesses, it is more since it's based upon the equivalent residential unit.

But we alternate between the money going to capital projects, you know, like the piping or the retention ponds or the floodway projects that also accomplish storm water quality goals, and then the alternative year, the dollar goes to the things I talked about in the last slide, the salary increases, the operating costs, etc.

So this year it's for the maintenance cost.

Everyone cast a vote.

We're still missing one.

All right, thank you all.

The next topic has to do with our school age program, and we're gonna have Shaniqua Hayden, our administrator of youth education and family services.

So the the three briefings that we just had here, especially the first one with the the water works.

I think that would be good for the citizens to hear at the nightly briefing.

At the website.

Thank you.

So I just think that particular one, you know, I mean if you want to do all three, that's fine.

But I think seeing the pipes and the age of the pipes, I think the citizens should see that.

So if you can fit it into a briefing in a council meeting during this season, okay, yeah, because I was gonna say we do do all of that at the I value presentations, and we put that online.

But if council wants us to put that in an afternoon work session, it was for I was talking about an evening one for the citizens who are watching.

Oh, well, I mean, many of them watch the afternoon too, but wherever you all, wherever the council agrees you would like it to go.

This is just a thought.

I mean, yeah, I just think seeing the age of the pipes when we're talking about increasing the rates.

So they understand it.

That's up to you guys.

Yes.

Um, regardless of whatever you decide, like just so you know, we will do uh we started this budget 101 series on social media as well and put it on the like you know website and stuff.

So we'll make sure we also do maybe one of those with Mr.

Bowery and also have that out there because a lot of people don't watch the council meeting.

So I I take your point, the more people understand it, the better, and we should use all of our communication challenges.

Yeah, all right.

So are we ready to move on to school age program center?

I'm sorry, I didn't see your hand up.

Yes.

Okay, so school age programs for clarification.

When we're talking about this, we're talking specifically about the before and after school program at our school sites.

There's a very valued program for um parents who have to work to make sure that their kids have safe care.

Um that this is different than the parks and rec program because we also have parks and rec programs in our community centers.

The ones in our schools, um, many times we hire school employees to provide that so that the students are getting not just, if you will supervision, but they're also getting things like tutoring and other kinds of things.

So when we're talking about this program, I wanted to be clear what we were talking about.

Um, my understanding is we haven't changed the rate since about 2015, which means and we've had a lot of um interest in this program, in fact, had to expand the number of offerings, which is a good thing.

But as that's happened, we've started to again with salary costs going up and also expansion, um, having to basically use general fund dollars to subsidize the program.

So we wanted to share with you what other cities are charging, what we could charge so that the general fund wasn't underwriting that.

And this is an example where if you did want to increase, um, then we could take that savings from the general fund to apply to other priorities of yours.

So with that, I'll introduce Dr.

Hayden.

All right.

Good morning.

Um good morning, uh Mayor Gray, Vice Mayor Brown, Council, City Manager Vedant Bunding, and City Attorney.

As mentioned, I'm Dr.

Shigwa Hayden, and I have the privilege to speak with you all this morning about school age programs, affectionately known as SAP.

So our program is currently offering STEM programs and other enrichments out of 24 locations located in Hampton City Schools through a memorandum of understanding that we have with Hampton City Schools, a long-standing partnership.

We average roughly 55 participants, which is roughly a little bit over 1,300 participants and children.

Currently, YEFS has been supplementing the program with our own operating budget, which has negatively or adversely impacted it for over $500,000, in addition to also them using some funds from the general fund.

Okay.

So we're the proposed fee increase, would start and just start to establish the recovering of direct costs, which may be WAE staff operating expenses, and indirect costs, such as custodial services and equipment with the application of best business practices and re-ex recreation program.

So let's explain these funds a little bit.

The reason why we would like to look at this fee increase with solely just support the before and after care program of school age programs.

Funds will help the program maintain consistent and reliable staffing, which is certainly essential to for delivering high quality before and after care, which is exactly what we plan, what we do, what we strive to do, and we want to continue.

We want to make sure that we're able to fully staff programs, which making sure that we're keeping our children safe and we're providing enrichment moments that are worthwhile for our children and also minimizing on operational disruptions.

So now we'll share a little bit about how you enroll with school age programs.

Currently, our parents can register with our online registration website, which is through community pass, also referred to as capture point.

Enrollment is determined on a first come, first serve basis.

There is no income restriction or requirement for eligibility, and our current wait list or interest list has 29 children on it.

So as city manager Bunching mentioned, no rate changes since 2012.

That's 14 years.

We're in 2026.

So here's our presence rates.

For before schools, it's $20 a week.

We do have these five-day passes in which customers may be able to purchase at $25.

We also have our after-school program at $45 a week, and which we also have the after-school program passes that participants can purchase, customers can purchase for $50 a week.

And of course, our registration fee is currently $20, which we'll discuss on the next slide.

So this is the registration fees currently for school age programs.

This also entails the registration fees from some surrounding localities and other organizations that do provide for for and after care.

So as you can see here, Hampton is at a $20 rate, as I mentioned previously.

We are proposing three options for you.

If you choose to do the 10% increase, our registration fee would go to $22, as you can see.

20% increase, it would go to $24.

And at 30% increase, it would go to $26.

As you can see, based on the organizations providing before and aftercare on the slide with the registration, two of the options would still fall under one of the localities.

So let's talk a little bit about our before care services.

So as you can see, our before care, as I mentioned previously, is $20.

If we look at the other localities, as you can see, we are low in comparison to the other localities.

And even if you look at the recommended options for you, the 10%, it would still just be $22.

If we did 20%, we're at $24, and at a 30% increase, we're at $26.

Still significantly low or then several localities in our area.

Chesapeake, I think it's important for us to note here as on the slide.

Chesapeake and Norway do not offer before care.

Virginia Beach and Suffolk only offer a monthly fee.

So these costs have been divided by four so that we can get a weekly rate for this slide.

Now we'll take a look at our after-school rates.

So Hampton's current after school fee is 45.

As you can see, there are a couple of localities that are lower than us.

However, there are several that are higher than us still at this time.

If we look at the 10% increase for aftercare for Hampton, we would be looking at $49.50.

If we increased it by 20%, we'd be looking at $54 a week.

And if we increased it by 30%, we'd be looking at $58.50, which is still lower, as I stated, than a few other organizations in the area.

So once again, in order to get this number, we've had to divide it to make a weekly fee.

Also, Norfolk charges $80 per month for kindergarten to fifth grade and $40 per month for sixth through eighth grade.

So for the sake of this presentation, we've used the K-5, the kindergarten to fifth grade rate.

We're looking at Norm's aftercare.

So the impact of the proposed fee increase is here.

The increase for that we're proposing for fiscal year 2026-2027 is necessary to ensure adequate staffing, operational stability within the program without a continued supplement from the YFS operating budget.

So as I previously mentioned, looking at option one.

This is if you would go with a 30% increase in weekly fees, daily passes, and registration fees, which I have reviewed with you, it would generate an additional $482,685.

If we look at option two, which is a 20% increase, and the weekly, daily passes and registration fees, it would generate an additional $321,790.

Option three, a 10% increase in the weekly daily passes and registration fees will generate an additional $160,000, $895.

And then, of course, option four is if there's no increase, and then we would continue to have the supplement fit from the YEFS budget in the general funds.

Any questions for me?

Councilwoman Ferraby.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

I just use some math, and I hope my math is correct.

But without looking at the registration fee, I believe both.

Um both parents typically take care before.

How many do you have any data on how many take advantage of both before and after school care?

Um I've I believe that we do have some data on that.

Of course, I don't have it with me at this presentation, but I will tell you that most people take advantage of the aftercare, of course.

Okay, the aftercare service.

Okay.

Our numbers are much higher in aftercare, and we have more sites open.

Okay, thank you.

Because what I was getting at at 10%, $2 for before school, $450 for after school, that's $26 a month.

If they took if they if the parent took advantage of both, and then looking at the 20%, that's $13 a week, which is $52 a month.

And that doesn't include the one-time registration fee.

Um I'm just concerned with the current um economic situation.

It it I believe it would be a burden to put $52 a month on a parent during this time.

Um I could lean toward, you know, perhaps a 10%, and then over the course of the three or four years, try to get it up.

But I'm not I could either go with us supplementing one more year and then giving them some advanced notice or looking at a sliding scale perhaps for the future, or um, you know, perhaps maybe one or the other if it's if the before school is just two dollars more a week or something like that.

But I'm I'm a little bit concerned looking at the total picture, looking at um increases in um just our regular utilities that we previously had to add another um burden on parents that are getting the children, our children are future, and those children of over a thousand children are getting excellent care and they're safe.

So um I I think from my value system that's very important.

Um so I'll stop there.

Thank you.

Thank you for the presentation.

Councilwoman Hawker.

I have several questions.

Um how um with each before care and after care, how long are they in before care and how long are they in after care?

Before care is roughly a couple of hours, about two hours roughly, and then after care, depending on the school, because you have some schools that let out later or earlier, but I will tell you no one.

I think we have them opening as early as like two or three, no later than six.

Okay.

So nothing stays open later than six.

I I don't know if this is still true, but to supplement that.

I know historically the before care utilization is more at like middle schools that start later because the middle, you know, the school system has tiered start times with elementary starting first, and then I think high school and then middle school, if I remember correctly.

And so middle school doesn't start till almost nine o'clock.

That's where you get a lot of before care utilization, but similarly they don't get out till almost four o'clock, like 3 30 or so.

So the schools, the elementary schools start really early, so you don't get a lot of before care there.

You're getting more after care because they're getting out at like two.

So just to keep that in mind with the tiered programs.

Yes.

Yes, and also what are they what are they getting with this when with the with the care?

Are they um being um I know most of the time is helped with homework?

Do they get snacks, breakfast, or you know, those types of uh things um educational wise, they just not playing the whole two or three hours waiting for school to start.

Um I mean, I'm just I'm just asking.

No, that's a great question.

So generally what you do get, we'll assist with homework, we offer snacks, we also do various enrichments where we have vendors come in and do various activities with the children that we contract with.

Then also we have um like calendars, each site has monthly calendars that have very specific activities and events that they're doing each day with the children.

So there is also that structured play.

I mean those structured activities, but also understanding for development of children, they also need an opportunity for open play.

But that is what they get in signing up and be participating in the program.

And I you have something on council okay, go ahead.

I have um two other questions, Mr.

Mr.

Mayhoe.

When if this was approved, when would this start?

Like the next school year?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay, yes, ma'am.

It would be the next school year.

My last question is is this.

My concern is um you do have a wait list because we do offer lower rates than normal people.

And my uh concern is for those parents, whether or not you are a single parent or if you have both parents in the home.

Um, if you have multiple children, two or three children that are in elementary school or middle school and have to pay per person, that's a that's an uh additional cost.

And the other thing to that, my other concern is if we do increase it, they may decide.

Well, if I'm gonna pay this, I might as well go outside somewhere else, you know.

Um I'm not saying that they that they will because it's they'll be right at the school, you know, it'd be a huge convenience form, but you never know how people think, you know, so it just you know that's a couple of my concerns with with that that it is um a service that we do offer and and for the fact um that the parents can benefit from because we're not as um I don't want to say expensive or or cost a little bit more than the um rest of them, you know, as far as outside I'm talking about local daycares and things like that or other programs that maybe offer since 2020.

Okay, councilwoman Muggler.

Thank you, Ms.

Mayor.

I I just I am um a retired parent, I guess, uh grown children now, but I did utilize the child care after school that was provided in Hampton.

It was excellent care, was extremely convenient because they just transitioned from their classroom to the cafeteria or some other space in the school is very high quality child care.

And the rates that Hampton has been charging for this are exponentially less than what you would pay in an out for an outside service, and it's exponentially less than you would pay for even a very high quality 501c3 program that I think we are all very familiar with, Peak Center.

Their rates are far above this.

They are a sliding fee scale based on income.

But I guess part of the point I'm trying to make by these comments is that all kinds of parents who are working are using these services.

And this is we're supplementing other people's child care through our tax dollars.

And for them to raise these rates to be comparable to other communities in the region is not unreasonable.

Um I do understand that the economy is very difficult right now, and we are looking at all kinds of ways for to make it less burdensome on families, but I do think we need to keep some of those things in mind.

Um we have been provided with a lot of uh very good data to compare to.

We will still be below um the cost for most of the communities in this region.

Just something to think about.

Mayor.

Uh Councilwoman Furry.

Uh I really appreciate uh uh Councilwoman Muggler's comments, and although I agree, I just think that perhaps a um compromise permission to compromise the the issue is that we waited over 10 years to try to do anything to adjust the rate, and um and I know it seems like September, August, September is is a long time away, but it's still quite a ways away.

And I would just like to see more of a I agree that we won't should do something, but I just feel that maybe a graduated approach or looking at a slide and scale more consistent with what Mayor Peak does would be more favorable than just a blanket, let's raise everything because it's competitive, um, you know, because we still have competitive rates, and I and I weighed that in my uh deliberation on you know on this subject uh councilwoman Campbell.

Do you um prioritize those who need the lower cost over go ahead?

Yes, ma'am.

So I was just gonna add that we do have um availability to assist families if they let us know they need some financial assistance.

Um we use the scale that's used through the federal poverty guidelines scale that's utilized through the Department of Human Services.

So we do have that available for our customers as well.

But if you have a slot and it opens up and you have someone who needs and someone who could afford um uh a different facility, do you choose the one who has a lower income that can't afford the other option, or is that illegal?

It's generally a first-come first basis.

Okay, okay.

Um our registration, but I would just also like to say this before I conclude.

The team has worked, we understand the climate and culture of the community right now.

We work in the cult the community, but at the same token, we worked very hard to try to give you all some options that we thought were doable at this point in time.

And so we did work, which is why we've given three options, but we have taken everything that you have said, many of the things we have tried to take into consideration before we presented it to you today.

And if I might say one of the reasons why it's probably taken us so long to bring it back is once before, and I can't remember it was two 15 or 16 or whatever, but we did bring it, and council said some of the same things you're saying, like we don't want to increase it now.

So we just finally said, you know, if we're in a tight budget year, we at least need to give you options.

So I don't disagree that maybe a gradual approach makes sense, you know, at all, but I I do want to say it's not that they haven't tried before to raise these fees.

I think we all struggle with not wanting to have latchkey kids in our community and making sure that we have quality um opportunities at a reasonable rate, and just you know, and this may not be the year to raise it at all, but we just need to have the conversations more regularly as opposed to assuming that you all won't want to raise it, which I think is what happened for several years intervening.

Thanks, Mayor Brown.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor.

Uh yeah, um I'm gonna chime in too because I you know I'm I have ambivalence about this because I know the rates need to be increased, but I don't know how many people may have been affected by the layoffs, you know, the federal government layoffs and those kinds of things.

And sometimes this between ten dollars and no increase could be a deal breaker uh for families who want the services.

But that that little small increase uh could you could be where they they just can't can't do it.

And uh I'm I'm I like to support incremental increases uh for the reasons um you know the economy gets better, uh and I know we got scholarships and other assists that family members can um you know benefit from, but if that will runs dry, then there's there's no money there.

So uh but I I I do hear all of the arguments, but I would like to see it incrementally increase because I know we need to it's been 10 years, but probably longer than that.

Um we need to do something but in terms of going to um uh and I as I recall this program was not designed managed to correct me if I'm wrong to be a revenue producer, was it?

Not to be a revenue producer, but it was initially you know anticipated it would be revenue neutral or you know, and and over time we've made the decision that it's appropriate to subsidize it, particularly for lower income individuals like the scholarships they were talking about, but then it wasn't intended to be anyone can get cheaper daycare and avoid the private marketplace.

Now, there are a lot of parents why we to the earlier question about first come first serve versus prioritizing, a lot of parents would prefer their child to be at the same building all day because then they don't have to worry about transportation and all of those kinds of things.

And you know, hopefully all of our schools are doing this.

I I have heard that some of them aren't, and I will follow with Dr.

Hayden about this.

If if they're doing the things like homework and making sure people are doing homework and all that, as a parent, you can imagine why they would prefer that than having their kid transported to another off-site facility that's merely child care.

Um so that's why we've tried to make sure if if we can we expand slots, um, but you can't always expand slot just because one person's on a waiting list because you gotta hire someone.

So you want to have enough people at the same location to expand.

So they are allowed to expand if they have enough people at any location.

So say those 29 for the record all wanted to be in one school.

We would have already opened another classroom at that school.

But a lot of times what happens is of the 29, they may be across 15 different schools.

So we have to make sure there's enough to add an incremental worker.

Sometimes when we add that, we subsidize it a little bit more, you know, but we were never trying to make money.

We just in an ideal world you'd come close to breaking even or just have the subsidy of the lowest income individuals.

Councilman Bohm.

Um, I agree with the um proposed uh the incremental um because it does give you growth for if you want to expand as long as we um make sure that we do advanced notices sound like we're gonna do it next year, which is in advance.

Yes, I'm gonna agree with that.

Absolutely.

Okay, I'll just add that I I have grandkids in the program, and I do know that they're not just playing, that they do help with homework, they you know, there are constructive activities that they're engaged in because I pick them up from time to time, so I kind of see what they're doing.

Um I I do think that we should look at a gradual increase as opposed to doing it because really I guess what I'm hearing from from your presentation is that there's not really anything you're asking for to accomplish with the increase other than cover the shortfall that the city managers right now covering at the end of the year.

So she hadn't said anything about it, so it doesn't seem like you all need to really worry about.

However, I do see that you know the 482,000.

Yeah, the 482,000 could cover some of the other shortfalls that we're trying to fund and we can't fund too, but I don't think you could just all in one whack put that on the backs of the families who use the program to recover the funds.

So I think a gradual increase is is wanted.

And then also being able, as the city manager said, being able to add employees at certain sites to increase the capacity for more kids and reduce the wait list.

So it seems that there is some need for an increase that may help you kind of strengthen the program a little bit that ought to be factored in maybe when you bring this back again.

But otherwise, I I agree that you know we you know gradual increase is uh is better than no increase, and I mean is is better than trying to do it all at one time.

I don't think we should try to put the whole 30 percent burden on the parents all at one time.

Okay, all right.

Thank you.

All right, 95 or 7.

All right, thank you all.

We're gonna transition to compensation.

And Nicole Clark, I believe, is going to do that presentation.

Victor How do you see his last name?

I can never say it right.

Zapeta.

Our classification and compensation specialist will assist her.

1230.

Okay.

Okay.

Good morning, Mayor Gray, Vice Mayor Brown, members of council, City Manager Bunting, and City Attorney Sidnore.

Um we are going to briefly share with you our compensation recommendations for FY27.

Um, but before we do that, I would like to again just go over what our philosophy is because I think it's very important.

Our philosophy is to retain and attract talent by implementing competitive wage increases, reviewing and updating salary and pay scales for those positions that are hard to fill, addressing compression, and then recognizing our high performers through monetary and non-monetary awards.

Before getting into what we recommend for FY27, I think it's important to give a brief recap of what we've done as far as compensation is concerned over the past few years that you all have supported, um, starting with our public safety step plan.

As you know, in January 2024, that's when the STEP plan was actually implemented.

January 2025 was our first step advancement for those public safety sworn employees who were eligible to receive an advance in their step, and we also did a 2% market adjustment.

And I wanted to point that out because if you look ahead to what just took place a little over a month ago, um, we provided another market adjustment.

When we started the STEP plan back in 2024, the Hampton Roads localities were split.

Some were on a step plan and some were on an open range.

I would say all, if not maybe one, um, are now all on a step plan.

And in doing so, they have gone through market analyses as we did when we proposed this to you initially, and they have provided their sworn employees with sizable increases.

With your commitment for us to keep up with the market and remain competitive, we had to make significant adjustments this year.

And as you can see, in January of this year, we increased the recruit entry step by 10 percent, and the other ranges by 7.5 percent.

And as you can see, that resulted in an annualized cost of 5.2 million because we are implementing that halfway through the fiscal year, that is two point almost 2.9 million for this remainder of the fiscal year.

Excuse me.

As far as our civilians are concerned, we also did a market study for them that took place and was effective July 1, 2024.

Prior to that, we did provide a 5% general wage increase, and the salary ranges were adjusted to reflect a minimum of $15 an hour.

Again, I think that's important to point out because we are still ahead of the state.

Um I know there is legislation now in the General Assembly to increase that and accelerate the rate to get to that amount, but we are already there, and again, um, with your commitment to remain competitive, we will increase as necessary.

With the market study for the civilian workforce, there was a three percent general wage increase that was provided.

The salary ranges were also adjusted two percent, and we did that to support one of our goals, which is not to increase or contribute to compression.

And then we provided compression adjustments to our employees, and those consisted of 0.5% increase per one year of service up to 10 years.

And then last year, July 1, we implemented a 4% general wage increase, and the salary ranges were adjusted 1.5% increase.

With that, I'm going to turn it over to Victor, and he is going to share with you the recommendations for Fly 27.

Thank you, Nicole.

And good morning, everyone.

Going back to public safety, you can see here the starting pay ranges for a certified officer or firefighter with the adjustments that we just made in January.

We are now much more competitive.

You can see we are now third in the region.

Aside from public safety, there are a few groups of positions that we've recommended some grade increases based on what we find in the market.

Currently, Hampton is lowest in the market.

We're about 9% behind what we see among the other localities.

So we are suggesting increasing the starting pay for this group.

Now there are several other classifications within this department that affect that are affected if we increase the pay grade.

So looking top to bottom, call taker specialist, dispatcher, trainee, dispatcher, senior dispatcher, the shift supervisor, and the unit manager.

In order to reduce compression, all of those would see a similar grade increase.

So you can see from the left column where it says the title and the grade.

What we are suggesting is in the right column.

To make these adjustments, the cost comes to 192,000.

Most of that is bringing current employees up to the new minimum of each of these three grades.

Similar data you'll see that Hampton is right near the bottom.

We are about 8% below our market.

And let's see.

Um based on what some of our uh other localities are doing, we are suggesting a three percent uh general wage increase and going to the um pay ranges um we are suggesting a uh one and a half percent uh market adjustment, and that would feather through each position on all of our pay plans, and that is the the associated cost as well at this time.

I'll take any questions.

Uh Vice Mayor Brown, yeah, yeah.

Thank you for your uh presentation.

When you look at uh adjustments for the various employees, do you do it by for instance?

Do you look at just public works and determine what their pay rate is versus of the region, police and fire, and maybe another first respondents and the light uh do you do it across the board?

Uh in terms of looking at positions, sure, sure.

Uh we do somewhat of a sampling uh across various departments, uh and like I said, we we do many of these adjustments on an as-needed basis.

So if there's trouble recruiting for a vacant position, uh, you know, we'll look at the market for that and adjust as needed.

Uh I try to aim for about the 50th percentile uh just to remain competitive.

We to elaborate, we consistently use those localities that were referenced earlier, basically the seven cities in our scale and scope.

The police and fire uh sworn positions are very easy because they're set times basically that and similar qualifications for when you would move up from a police officer to a higher ranks, with the one exception being that only Hampton and Norfolk have corporals, so they're very easy to get comparisons there, and people tend to move based upon their time in the system, particularly now that most cities have gone to step systems.

It's a lot harder for the general workforce to get exact matches because people don't move at the same rate, and people come like police and fire, they almost always come in as a recruit and then they progress.

Whereas let's take an accountant, when Carl recruits for an accountant, he's gonna recruit for the best accountant he can get.

He might have to take someone just out of college with the minimal experience, but if he can get someone who's five, six, seven years, he's going to get that, and we would not be paying a five, six, seven-year candidate at the starting range of the scale.

So what we have to look at then is where to properly slot them, if you will, with internal equity consideration.

So sometimes employees think, well, I've been here 10 years, and this person came in, they shouldn't be making as much as me.

But if that person came with 10 years of experience, it's reasonable.

You have to or otherwise you would never get a 10-year person at the starting rate.

So it's a lot more nuanced when you're looking at those.

So what we do to elaborate and give like specific examples, Victor would take what are the ranges with other places, and then like what are the average salaries, an average tenure.

So you have to look at a lot more than you do with police and buyer.

But that's what they do.

And what we've started to do, and you all have been gracious enough and prior counsels to do this is to give us some flexible money so that when things happen in the middle of the year, I think I use this example with most of you.

Courtney right now is recruiting for a vacant attorney position, and she's not getting strong candidates, and she looked at what others were starting at, and she realized that we were a bit low.

So rather than waiting till July 1st, we're looking at and changing that now because it's not gonna help her if we wait till July 1st to make the adjustment to this the salary range.

She needs that adjustment now.

So that's why you're not getting a lot of it used to be we'd bring you all sorts of positions that needed to be changed, but you all started to say, don't wait.

If you can if we can give you some flexibility money, adjust the mid-year.

The reason why I think 911 and animal control came out of these particularly is that because they're in law enforcement, they are more like the sworn positions in a sense.

That you saw like with the 911 scale, there are set steps that you go through as you learn different aspects of the discipline.

So there are many kinds of calls you have to handle police calls, fire calls, medical calls, and the more of those you can do, the more you're worth to us.

So we move people along as they get those different certifications.

So that's why you have to almost move those all at one time, i.e.

now.

But I want to assure you, we are looking at them all year long.

So, like when Courtney comes and says I can't fill, that's when he Victor's doing the type of analysis he and I have described for you.

Uh councilwoman Murgan.

Thank you.

May I have two questions independent.

On the last slide, sorry, another my keen ear was not listening as quickly should have been.

Um for the civilian market adjustments, what was your recommendation?

Uh one 1.5 percent.

The 1.5.

Okay.

And do we know this may be a manager question?

Do we know what is the state's uh recommendation for civilian employees across the state?

I'm not clear yet what they're doing on civilians.

I have heard that they're doing three percent for teachers.

Right, okay.

I just because we we as a community capture so many of our um constitutional offices and the funding that goes to them is the rate that the state does.

I just was wanting to know that so that it just helps to know how much will be covered.

Have you heard out of the state budget yet?

I hadn't seen reporting on the general state workforce yet.

I I thought I heard two percent for the general non-education.

And again, I'm not sure.

I think that's salaries.

I'm not sure how that affects their actual ranges, which this is for the ranges and not actual.

So since you brought up constitutional officers, just a quick refresh for everyone.

They are on our pay ranges because they all now have signed the uh participation in the city pay plan.

So what happens is if the state increases whether it's the pay range or it's the actual salary, we basically get that as revenue to offset where they fall with our city pay plan.

So if we're but if we did a three percent raise and they did a two percent raise, we're doing a three percent on a higher salary because they have their range is artificially low, almost every city supplements.

Um, and then so but we would get some part of that cost with the two percent increase if that's indeed what it was.

If we did no increase and they did two percent, they wouldn't get two percent because we're already subsidizing them.

That two percent would offset your subsidy.

That's how that works.

Are there any questions?

Let me explain the civilian marketplace adjustment because it does not work like the step plan.

So when the step plan, the step plan is you'll recollect is set so that you know you come in at this level, and then after each year, you get a two and a half percent increase until after you've completed 10 years, and then it goes to two and a half step every other year.

That's why you had some eligible and not eligible.

We don't have, and most cities don't have civilian step plans.

So when we move a range, like there are different options we had up there, and they said they were recommending one and a half, we'd move the whole range by one and a half percent.

Every employee does not get one and a half percent.

We move them so that we move the minimums, but what we have to do to make sure we don't get compression, is to give a much a bigger general wage increase.

So one and a half really works if you do three percent or higher.

But that's half of how you're moving everybody that's been with you.

Last year, I think we did one and a quarter or something, if I remember correctly, um, and we gave a four percent range adjustment.

I mean, we did a four percent for everybody.

So the range is moved up a little bit.

A brand new employee because all existing employees who had a year of service moved up four percent, no one got bunched up against each other.

If you wanted to main perfect, you know compression for years of service, you would have to give that range adjustment to everybody.

But we don't do that, but never have most cities don't, because they don't have civilians for the most part on step plans.

So when you got two questions here, when you go to do the employee compensation increase, I would highly recommend whatever you put as what you feel comfortable with, not doing a market range adjustment any more than half of what you're doing them.

So as I mentioned to you, each of you in in private conversations, my sense of where the region is moving is generally in the three to three and a half percent range.

So if we wanted to be comparable, we'd want to be in the three to three and a half range.

That would mean a range adjustment would be either one and a half or but I can't do mathematics anymore, but half of three point five percent.

If we wanted to be a little bit more aggressive because we know we're thinly manned and we wanted to recognize that, you might look at a four percent, and therefore you wouldn't want the market range adjustment to go any higher than two percent.

You don't have to do a full two percent.

They're saying they think one and a half would be sufficient, but you don't ever if you were someone who only wanted to do two percent, you wouldn't want to also do one and a half as a market range adjustment because there's not enough difference to avoid compressing.

Does that make sense?

Are we having two questions?

You are going to have two questions.

And the first question is going to be what do you want to do as the employee compensation increase?

Because again, the next question, which is going to be the range adjustment, you want to do that half or less factor.

Councilman McCamp.

And how does this relate to the school increase from cuts?

My understanding, um, I mean, they haven't released their budget, everything is in flux, but that they were hoping to get as high as four percent.

A lot of that would depend upon what happened with the state budget.

I think the state budget is both the House and Senate coming out with a three percent makes it easier for them to get there.

Obviously, they have not finalized their budget or released their budget, so I can't say, but I know that they were targeting to get to four percent.

That was their their hope.

We don't have an automatic week, we copy them, but we do like to be somewhat in alignment if possible, because all of our folks are public service workers.

Um we haven't always been perfect.

The last several years we have done the same salary increase, uh, with the exception, of course, of public safety, which is a whole different category.

Um, but sometimes they give higher bonuses than us and a little bit lower salary.

Sometimes we give you know less.

It just it it's not an automatic, we have to be the same.

But again, not to speak for the school board or Dr.

Haynes because they are so in their budget process as we are.

My expectation is they're gonna push as higher as hard as they can.

I think they're I mean, again, I think that's their stated goal.

Other questions, comments or human resources.

Okay.

All right, thank you.

So the first question there is open now for those of you to indicate where you would like to be for the employee compensation increase this year.

Right, but you can't do them additive because people aren't gonna get that.

Again, I just want to clarify in case it wasn't clear.

I may have used too much technical language.

It's when you're doing this, when we come to the next question about the range adjustment, it's not going to be additive for the employee.

It's not going to be three percent plus something, or four percent plus something, or two percent plus something.

What you're doing here is what the employee who has been here a year or longer would get.

The range adjustment will help and adjust new recruitment for someone in the range.

So the minimal uh someone who's an applicant who meets the minimum qualifications and you hire at the entry rate, that's what that's changing.

This is unlike police and fire, where because you're maintaining a step system, they got the combination.

So I got a question was it a combination for the workforce or not?

It is not a combination.

All right.

Do we have seven?

Yes, we did.

Okay.

So now is the question on the market rate adjustment.

What was recommended?

I'm sorry, missing.

They said 1.5%.

It looks like we're missing one.

There we go.

Okay.

If everyone's good, we will move along.

Uh Mr.

Doctrine is going to talk about French benefits, and I think we can get that in before the wire for lunch.

Is he going to ask as he's coming back up after lunch, we'll do the other rankings, the polling on your priorities for capital and operating.

So Vice Mayor Brown, City Council, City Manager, and City Attorney.

Um today I want to talk to you about uh health insurance and the uh proposed impact for fiscal year 2027.

Before I get into looking at some of the impact on employees, I wanted to tell you a little about the plan and what's driving the increase for 2027.

The city of Hampton has a self-insured plan.

That means that the plan is funded by premiums for the city and employees.

The city retains the risk of paying all medical and prescription drug claims.

We do not have a policy from an insured insurance company.

We do have what we call reinsurance.

And the city counter has hedged this risk.

Any claims that are incurred for a member greater than $175,000, we have insured that claim through an insurance policy with Center.

We have about 1515, 80, close to 1600 members in our plan.

Those are employees and retirees.

And so for 2027, we are projecting a 13.2% increase in our health insurance.

That is definitely much more than what we had in the previous fiscal year.

That was about 4.5%.

One of the main drivers that drive that increase, we look at the trends, and one of the big trends that are happening is our medical and prescription drug claim payments have gone up significantly for the past 12 months.

And a lot of what's driving those increases in our claims is really what we call high cost claims.

And those are normally for Pacific, you know, significant illnesses.

Renal failure could be one of those.

It could be some type of cancer.

It could be severe pneumonia.

So those significant claims we experienced, they pretty much almost double in our current uh 12 months.

And so those are driving some of the increase in our projection.

In addition to that, one of the things that are impacting our projection is what we call rising price or inflation.

We anticipate that our prescription drug inflation will be about 11%.

Our medical inflation will be about 8%.

And finally, we pay Centera for stop loss insurance.

This is insurance that covered claims greater than 175,000.

Because our high cost claims have gone up, we anticipate that our stop loss insurance will go up also.

So just to give you some context of what's driving that 13.2% increase in our health insurance.

And on a pay-per-it basis, it's $11.34.

If you look at the family coverage, it's much more significant.

It's $1,064 on an annual basis based on the average payroll of $68,000.

It's one and a half percent.

And on a payroll basis, it's $44 and $36 cents.

So this is the 80, 20% with the city picking up 80% of the increase.

Moving on to looking at the increase based on historical rates.

Looking at the impact on the tiers, employee only annually, that's an increase of 259.

Percentage of average salary is 68 is 0.38% on a paper basis is $10.80.

Looking at the family coverage, the impact is $1,014 annually.

Percentage of average salary is about uh one 1.47%.

And on a payroll basis is $42.25.

The option of the city picking up 50% of the increase and the employees picking up 50% of the increase.

On an annual basis, employee only.

That's $713.28.

It's over 1% increase based on the average salary, and almost $30 on a per period basis.

Looking at the family, it's almost $2,800.

It's a 4% increase based on the average salary $68,000, and it's a hundred and sixteen dollars per paper.

For if the city picks up a hundred percent of the increase for health insurance, there's no impact to employees.

So at 100%, the city's contribution will go up for health insurance to 3.1 million dollars.

At historical rates, which is about 81% picked up by the city, 19% picked up by employees, it would have an impact of 2.8 million dollars.

Um with the city picking up 80% and employees picking up 20%, it's an impact of about 2.8 million dollars.

And finally, if the city picks up 50% of the increase and employees pick up 50% increase, it's an impact of 2.2 million dollars.

And with that, uh before we get to the next slide of the poll, and I'll address any questions that you may have.

I do want to say so that before I ask your question, I do want to say we have maintained employees' premium the same for eight years, and so um and so for the past eight years we have maintained the employees' premium at the same level.

Councilwoman Hawkins.

Um I think all my council colleagues probably know by now that I fully support um the the city uh picking up the tab for the increased health care premium.

However, in the past, as I've done, um, when I've done the the the map between the 80-20, it is uh about 330,000 more as it had been in the past, um with with the between 100 percent and the 80-20, right?

Rule is what I've kind of dipped my guideline by.

Um I don't really don't have a question, I just had a statement as to why I support what I support.

Um I've often felt our employees are the best commodity that we have.

I'm not soliciting on anything, I'm just telling y'all how I personally feel.

But um, you know, they they work hard, they work with less, some of them, and um be it not robbery that we um you know support them in their increased health care premium, um, for them to continue and letting them know how much we in the past as we have, how much we do care for them, and that's just me.

Uh like I said, I'm not asking you all to agree.

Um just letting everyone know how I feel about it.

I do want to point out um I have I do believe because the question came up earlier about schools, I believe their approach is to fund 100 percent for because you had asked earlier, Councilman Campbell about what schools are doing, and I don't I again they haven't released a budget, but that's what they typically aim to do.

Um I am a bit concerned.

I have in the past thought it was appropriate to pass on some of the increased employees over time.

I didn't when we weren't giving raises or you know, when um the increase was so large as it would consume the salary increase.

So I just did some quick numbers.

This 13.2% is a big increase.

Even if we did the historical rates, the family plan would eat up and cost more than the salary increase, even if we did a 4% for many of our workers.

Many of our workers live paycheck to paycheck, even though you've been progressive and raising the minimum wage faster than when you were required, and we've been moving ranges and pay rates.

You know, if you take a $50,000 year employee and you give them a 40, I mean a 4% increase, it's like 200.

And you saw that the family plan increase would be 44 or 42 dollars per pay period.

They're gonna net lose money if we don't do it.

The time, if you were to want to do a shared would be when you have a much more minor increase in health insurance, because then they could pick up a little piece of it.

But to try to pick up at 13%, I mean this this is a this is a very hard equation.

We always talked about what we have to start with, you know, and then we have the compensation we want to do, and then this.

The good news is we do have some VRS rate savings, which will help mitigate this somewhat.

But I guess what I'm saying is the $300,000 difference here, it's gonna hurt a lot of workers, particularly the labor workers that we have, even our police officers and firefighters, you know, even with the big raise you just gave them sharing this health insurance increase would cause many people if they have family coverage to have net loss and take-home pay.

So as an advocate for our workers as well, um you know, as I know all of you are, I just wanted to make a plea here on this one.

Um it's tempting with all the financial pressures to say, well, let's split it, and people should have to contribute to their health air share costs.

But the last thing I would want is to see someone have a net reduction and take home pay.

Vice Mayor Brown, you know, thank you, Mayor.

Mayor, thank you for that too.

I hope.

But I think the the council from I've sit for the last few years have supported 100%.

We'll continue to support that.

Because I've been where they are.

Um and um, you know, this economy and uh the layoff that we're seeing, the reduction in pay.

Um not only are we um I feel that we are uh premier employer, and we've done well by our employees.

We we're not where we need to be, but we get it there.

And so I just think this is another opportunity to retain the best workforce that we can retain by giving the best benefits we can get.

This just is just one of them.

I mean, uh to me, this is a no-brainer.

Me personally.

Um so I support that 100%.

And I misspoke when I I I realized someone texted me.

I said a four percent raise would be two hundred dollars, it would be two thousand, you know.

But nevertheless, the math is still what I said, because that if you take two thousand and you divide by twenty-six, it would be seventy-six dollars per pay versus you know, so you you're in a really tight position there.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

And also I wanted I wanted to to say this.

One of my other um uh reasons has has always been that whatever increase that we do give them, um, that I did not want them to I wanted them to see an increase in their paycheck and not be have it be eaten up in health care premium.

And so uh that's another um reason I'm I'm done with it.

I mean, y'all know how I feel about it, but that's the other reason why.

I definitely would support this a hundred a hundred percent council carefully.

Um Carl, if you could back to slide four.

Um I uh as a as a manager, I always get the they're getting a bigger raise than I am, and this is discriminating against the single employees because they're getting a one percent while someone with a family has got four.

You know, I fully support giving it, but I just want you guys to be aware that there's a feeling out there that if you don't have children and you're not married, you're not getting someone else is getting a bigger raise than you just because they have a family.

So just something to consider.

I've heard that number of days.

Yeah, I I have gotten that too.

I've also gotten that some employees don't take our health insurance because they have health insurance through their own, you know, their spouse or something like that.

Somebody's getting a bigger and why am I not getting anything I'm saving you money?

Um, you know, this is something that all employers struggle with.

Um, if you wanted to theoretically, some employers resolve it by what they call cafeteria plans, and they give everybody a flat amount of money, and they can spend it however they want.

The challenge with that is to give everybody what we subsidize the family plan by would be astronomical.

We can certainly do the numbers for you, and if we reduce the people who get the family support to what's the singles got they would be broken.

So it's a system we're living with, unfortunately.

What I generally I try to explain the math to the workforce, and I also try to explain that people go through different life cycles in their life.

So, you know, just because they're not married now, don't have children now, doesn't mean that they might not later.

They may be, I started, for instance, as employee only, and then after many years went to family, and as my you know, children graduate, my husband having access to military hair care, I can go down to employee later in my life.

So there's all sorts of cycles that people go through, and a lot of times employees only think about where they are this moment in time and not think about that it will be there for them when and if they need it.

But I take your point, it is true.

Uh any other questions for Mr.

Dodge.

Okay, all right.

Thank you, Carl.

Okay.

So uh this is the question, the last question you have before lunch break.

Where would you like to be with the health insurance premium increase?

All right, so 100% consensus on that.

All right, I believe um we are set up for lunch.

Um I will defer to the mayor about how long we had tentatively said we in our planning that we would give you up to an hour.

If you don't need a full hour, we can certainly come back quicker.

It's up to you all in terms of how you want to progress, but we did think you might want to break.

Um before we break, I know some of you did not get the email right away about how we were going to do the polling this afternoon.

So the lunch break can also be a chance if you need to spend a little bit more time looking at those options before we come back.

But when we come back, we're gonna jump right into your polling on your operating and capital budget.

Okay.

So anybody need to leave.

I got a point.

All right.

Well, in that case, let's uh come back at one third.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

Well, I believe lunch is in the next room.

Ready to go up.

There's like 10,000 things still open.

Okay, so we uh ready to uh be for the rest of this session and uh move into the last item on items on the agenda, which is the uh priority ranking so I'm gonna ask the city manager to uh use that.

So we thought as we go into that, we would show you sort of where you all have been with the morning exercises in summary so that you understand that as we do this prioritization exercise, I want us to be real and realize there's probably not a lot of the operating things we're gonna be able to add this year, but nevertheless, it's important to know where you would like to add if we do have extra money.

So if you want to show the some results of the um where the majority was polling earlier with the compensation results, if we do the four percent, if we do the market rate adjustment at 1.5, the public safety step, which of course we would um honor, and then the health insurance premiums at 100%, the compensation would go up by 8 million in total for the workforce.

So again, knowing tight revenue, um that's why I'm just cautioning as we do this exercise and we want you to do it so we have a sense of where you would like to be if we have available revenue.

Um I just want to caution that a lot of these things will not be able to be added this year.

That said, at least operating capital is a little bit different because as we've discussed before, we build out a five-year CIP and we're paying down debt as we go, and we have one time savings because we never overspend our budget and we never end exactly on the dollar.

So there will be more flexibility with capital than in all likelihood operating.

But we do want to have a good sense of where you would like to spend the money if we have extra and not enough to lower the tax rate further.

Because one of the questions I got on the break was how much is one penny worth on the real estate tax rate?

And Carl said it was 1.67 million.

So as an example, you might have after we put all this in, if we had 500,000 left, it's not enough to lower the tax rate a penny.

So then how would you spend that 500,000 dollars?

That's how we use these ranking exercises.

So we are going to start with the operating, I believe.

Is that correct?

Um, and I want to apologize a little bit for the confusion and changes we've had along the way with this, because at first we were going to ask you to rank your top seven or nine depending upon the category, with the theory that there'd be no way we'd be able to do more than seven or nine.

That said, a lot of you asked different questions that caused us to rethink that.

So just to explain, in some cases, people said, Well, there are things we've already committed publicly to, like master plan updates.

Why should I waste one of my votes on that?

Or some of these are really small, like I I'm just seeing one up here right now.

I'm not picking on any in particular, but small business development center, that's 21,000.

Why should I use my vote for a 21,000 item when I could, you know, do something like the homeless transition housing at 200, but that doesn't mean I don't think the small business development center is unimportant.

So we we we try to think about how we might accommodate all of these requests, and at the end of the day, there's a finite amount of money, and so we said rather than saying, well, we'll take master plans off because you've already said you're gonna do it.

It still takes money, right?

So you still have to know where it falls and the relative priority to other things, or if we took it off, instead of giving you keeping seven votes, we'd have to take off one of your votes.

So in the end, we I realize this is a little bit more challenging and it's gonna take a little bit longer, but I think it will give us the best overall data, and that is if we rank you rank them all ordinally, and we reviewed with you how to work this device and slide them and all of that.

Whatever works for you, obviously use your process.

If you haven't had a chance, because I know the change in guidance came out yesterday, and not everybody saw the email in time, and we had the bid dinner and all of that.

If you need to do it as you go, my recommendation for what it would be worth.

I played with this a little bit myself, is I would put them all in, and then I'd start with you know, one and two and say, is two more important than one?

If so, move it up.

If it isn't, leave it where it is.

Is three more important than one or two, and just work your way down the list and slot them where they go as opposed to having to go through all the sheets and order, you know, order them and then go through your sheets.

Some of you knew in advance and or had time to do it in advance and may have done your sheets and already rank them.

And if you want, you can just but use your numbers on your hard um copy, or I know one person wanted to use Excel and you know, reorder Excel.

So, however, it works for you.

Several of us will be circulating around the room if you need help in terms of figuring out how to rank them, or if there's any questions you have from a technological standpoint, if you have a blip and it's not working, or you have a question, Dosia has identified herself as the IT tech support for this exercise.

But if you have questions about any of the you want we want to refresher on what we mean or about a topic, or if you're confused about the ranking, just raise your hand, and myself or Brian or Jason will or one of the other staff will come around and hand help you and answer you.

If any of you before we do this work, or as you're doing this work, want to talk about a particular project as a group before you rank it, this would be the time to do so.

Otherwise, what we're gonna do is have you do the ranking and then we'll review the results and have you all have a chance to talk about the results.

Does that make sense?

Questions?

You look like you had a question.

Go ahead.

Okay, so in the end, um everybody has an item.

I might rank it one, somebody else three, somebody else five, somebody else seven.

How do you determine where that where that that item falls at the end of the day?

Okay, so what this system is doing, like it did last year, is it's ordered, it's it's doing weighted voting effectively.

Think of it that way.

So if you rank something one, it's going to score better.

Like if three people rank something one, and seven people rank something ten, even though ten people said the ten, it may not rank as well as the three people who scored it one and four people scored it two.

It's going to wait vote it and then list it.

Now, once we do that weight voting, we're gonna come back.

We we want to get through the the rankings, do our closed session item so that they can produce the results and show you in a easier format than what you'll see on here, and then we'll talk about it.

And if someone wants to say, well, you know, can any of these have seven votes, but they were just lower, we would want to rank that higher than something that had you know three or four votes one and no votes from three people, then you all can look at that after we do the ranking.

But the way it's set up is to do weighted ranking, which is why the order you put them matters.

Did I answer the question you were asking?

Okay.

So the first one could do is operating, then we'll do capital.

We're doing all the operating as one group, and then we'll do all the capital as a group.

Okay.

So operating for the benefit of the public that may be here are the things that are going to require annual money, recurring money to sustain itself.

These are the things that we would want to use the growth and revenue to fund, or cuts and services to fund.

Um the capital when we get to that, those are going to be one-time nature.

So we can use bond funds, we can use end-of-the-year savings.

We can use, you can use recurring money and just fund different projects every year.

But typically the reason why we're able to do a little bit more on the capital side than the operating side again is because you're gonna have end-of-the-year savings every year.

And we typically issue bonds every couple years as we pay off debt, we we can issue more debt and not impact our budget.

Any other questions?

Um Councilwoman Martin.

Uh not a question so much as a comment at this point in time.

I know everybody's like ranking already, and we're not supposed to do that in school.

Um, but we're not in school.

But educator at heart.

Mr.

Mayor, at this time, would it would you entertain the idea of uh council members uh giving a narrative on a particular project that they would like council people to consider prioritizing if we could do operating and then when we come to operating if we could speak to that.

Speak operating first and then do capital.

And then when we do capital, we'll do that.

Right.

Okay.

Sounds good.

Umless you do.

I'll go I'll go first since that's the gested and ask for just in the in the operating um really love for council people to consider um uh higher ranking or ranking in your top seven soundscapes.

I know it is it is have going into this five members did support it very um strongly going in.

But um sorry, soundscapes.

Um this is at least the second time it's been on our ranking sheets, maybe the third.

Um it is an outside agency, um, but I I think it really brings uh a tremendous value to the community.

Um as many of you may know, Newport News has uh is the home base for soundscapes um and has seen really great success with soundscapes.

Um it has been um you know a program that has provided um really great results for young people in school, their attendance is up.

Uh it is very uh impactful on their um uh their attendance, their behavior, um, their self-esteem, their sense of belonging, um all things that are very positive for our young people, and it does go hand in glove with the work that we are doing in youth violence prevention.

Um so just wanted to give that um a little extra boost.

Mr.

Mayor, do you have anything else?

And I'll add that uh Soundscape has been you know some very successful music program, and the key is progressed through from the elementary level through through the higher levels and eventually into bands and the penis of the youth orchestra really good key is who start off program uh paint budgets, and but they work their way up to plan you know, string instruments, and all and um you know the data is shown that the attendance and grades and so participate in the program because it goes social and emotional skills teaches teamwork and all that.

So it's more than just about an easy way is to uh to do the program at Y's Thomas Community Center uh after school program.

budgets and then but they work their way up to plan you know string instruments porns and all and um you know the data showing that the attendance and grades and so forth are better for kids to participate in the program because they feel social emotional skills teach us teamwork and all that so it's more than just about music and the plan is to uh to do the program at the Y Thomas Community Center uh it's after school program uh and uh so kids who uh participated in white time after school program and I think I think the other kids probably come in we like to get it started this is a three year pilot which eventually would uh serve 80 kids in the program today well the project would be over uh thank you Mr.

Mayor um I would like for council to really consider um the remote general rebranding of Bay Days um everywhere I go the elderly the older the younger um they asked you know when are we gonna bring back beta we would look at Hampton as being a destination place I think um people would definitely come to support it it's uh family oriented um and it's definitely will be a revenue driver so I would appreciate your support on having that in your top rankings thank you and on that one if I may Mr.

Mayor I just want to clarify we wouldn't be able to pull it off for this September but we would need the money in the upcoming budget for the following September assuming we wanted to keep the same date thank you uh Vice Mayor Brian yeah thank you um references the day days I support bay days but the estimate for beta's is grossly underestimated and I don't know I'm not sure this is the true level voting that number the trigger so the question about that I'm glad you uh put that to me to address the estimates that were provided to you assumed a $25,000 cost for entertainment which is what they were doing at the very end of Bay Days but Bay Days and its height had the uh city hall stage and had much uh larger kinds of entertainment draws and I think that's what you all were envisioning when you asked me about it.

So uh we would if you wanted entertainment costs vary radically these days um what we would need to do is look at the type and level of entertainment that you want and then reprice it to add more money for the entertainment.

The 25,000 would only allow what I would call local acts but if you wanted like a national tier performer we would certainly have to add several hundred thousand dollars.

So what I'm saying is so for me I'm supporting Bay A but it's difficult for me to vote on this is a number come back different.

So should we be voting on this now or should this be an addendum to do the correct or the closest estimate we can get.

Well some of it's gonna depend upon like I said what level of entertainment you want I would I would suggest I don't want me and my banner uh uh you know entertaining that's cheap.

Yeah so what I would suggest I mean but even still I could say I mean literally and I'm being extreme when I say this it could be anywhere from 200,000 to a million.

I mean if you wanted someone like Pharrell he gets million plus you know and whether he would do discounts for our area or not that's different.

Now I mean he's not the only one I'm just using a very extreme example right so then there are other talent that you know people would like that is of a national scale that you might be able to get for 200 300 thousand so but without further conversation with you all about what kind of talent might you want it's hard to give an exact number that's why I was qualifying that the number that you have has 2500 in entertainment if we want to say just tentatively you know for a higher level of entertainment you would need to add 2000 plus to it you know we can you know that I would suggest that as a benchmark because we're talking right now about Juneteenth entertainment and the entertainment so you know suggestions that are coming back of what I would call a mere mid tier national or in the two to three hundred thousand dollar range um part two on um more laughing for Allison uh more laughing art and media program for them around the table who who had an opportunity to go to this event uh that was a great experience for young people to learn about media journalism reporting acting drama stage production production management and the like uh she did a um encapsulated her program at the new American theater and I know that we had talked about and I think members of council some uh were in favor of uh making um some type of contribution toward that and I see we have listed here because she asked for 250 thousand dollars and certainly that was not going to happen but I I I would encourage my members of council if it's something that uh we want to do that we do come up with the number uh in the 25 to 50 thousand dollar ranch I would want to be closer to 50 than I was to 2500 program because it's a program that's growing and there was some concern about others coming in from another community but for the most part the majority uh this last session yeah but the majority of those uh young people from hand and um and I think there's some conversation too about your work in terms of uh getting um uh in time contributions as well

I would want to be closer to 50 than I was to 25,000 program because it's a program that's growing, and there was some concern about others coming in from another community, but for the most part, the majority uh this last session yeah, but the majority of those uh young people from Hampton.

And um, and I think there's some conversation too about your work in the school system in terms of uh getting um uh in-time contributions as well.

So I hope that we can consider that uh just as I also want my final thing too.

I want to also put what uh sounds fixed as well.

Which one's which number?

Um I'm gonna address that.

So I'm gonna say that.

You said more laughing and soundscape, but it's not on here, but I've speaking to the manager.

Uh we can make that adjustment.

Am I right?

Correct.

So the vice mayor asked me, and I conferred with the team.

That one was not on here because it got three green votes, although I want to qualify those who voted for it for green said not at 250.

They suggested various things between 25 and 50,000.

Three people put it as yellow, and one person had put it as red.

So the criteria to make it to this list was four green or a tie, three green, three yellow.

But if something was red in this case, it became three four, right?

So what we can add it.

The only thing is if we add it or anything else you all want to add to the ranking, you know, those that were like 331.

If you want to add them, we can add them.

Those of you who have started to do your work, you will lose your work.

So we will have to start over.

Um you may not have gotten very far.

I mean, in terms of what you're doing on your machines.

If you were to float that in.

Yes, because for them to add anything to the list, we can add.

But if you've already started it, we got to reset it to add, or else you wouldn't have that option to add.

Does that make sense what I'm they can add on the spot?

So if there's that or any of the others on your sheet that were like 331.

So, as an example, the next one that I saw right under um more laughing was Let Our Voices in Power, which is Adrian Cook's organization.

That one also got a 331.

I'm not necessarily suggesting adding that one because we could probably handle that with the safer grant that we're likely to get.

But my point being there were others like that, where because we made the rule, you had to have four yellow.

I mean, four four green.

And if it was tied three-three between green and yellow, it wasn't clear, so we put it on there.

But if there was not, if there were seven people who responded, and the four went the other way, we didn't put it on that.

So that's where you're getting the ones like Allison Moore, um, the Let Our Voices in Power, and a few other ones.

I'm not remembering off the list, but when I was looking at with the Vice Mayor, I saw several others in that category.

So if you want to add them, we can add them.

You'll just have to start your your reordering over when we add them.

I like something.

Thank you.

I was thinking.

Um, I have a question, and then I've got a I'm I have one that I'd like for you all to support um the council to support.

Um 39 Air Power Park and Hampton Carousel Carousel programming supplies.

Is that because they don't have any more money in their operating account?

No, it's because they want to expand offerings.

I checked on that because I can't remember who asked me if it was just they they were out of money.

Shouldn't we just give it to them?

And yes, we would take care of that.

That would be a base budget adjustment.

But if it's for an expansion of offerings, that's when we put it on your list.

Okay, because I that just seemed like such a small amount of money in the scheme of how large our budget is.

Right.

Um, so I would like for council to support the um the Hampton tour and I I'd like for you to support both the pilot and um the larger amount item.

And I I I kind of want to make a little point here.

I feel like we'd need the pilot to try to sort out what to do.

I several of us have been to Charleston and Savannah, and we noticed that with our rich history, it's not conveying to bring the public in.

And I don't want to do a build it and they will come, however, we can't keep doing the same thing expecting the same result.

And our history is way, way, way too rich for us to continue, in my opinion, to not figure out how to um put it more on the forefront and help our tourism industry to grow.

I went to the um I stopped by the visitor center, the the rest stop, the Virginia Welcome Center, and these beautiful brochures about the Hampton History, the Hampton University Museum, Port Monroe, Hampton Black History and Heritage Series, make history with us with the Hampton History Museum and the Virginia Airspace Science Center, all have brochures.

And me being a member on the board of the Hampton History Museum, we have a lot of offerings.

But it's not obvious to the casual observer, and it's not visible.

And this all started, I think, from some of us just talking about how I mean I hop on a golf cart.

You know, you can hop on a golf cart tour, you can hop on a bus tour, you can ride a horse, and we've got you know, we have an asset with um the bluebergap farm that we could possibly store horses.

But I I I want us to empower the city to think outside the box when it comes to how can we bring our history forward in such a way that people want to come to Hampton, hop on a bus, hop on a golf cart, hop on a boat, get a little food, and then bring more people back, get them over to Buckrow Beach.

Something is missing.

I can't tell you how to fix it, but it I feel like we have to do something.

I think $20,000 seed money with working with some other constituencies and getting some creative ideas in here would be a help.

But I I like but also I think it's important to consider making it a priority for the higher dollar amount, maybe spread over three years, similar to what um the mayor talked about and others regarding soundscapes.

And um, and I want to say this out loud because this is very, very important.

Whatever we try, sometimes you have to fail in order to do better and to learn from it and then go back and revector.

Um the end goal is to in is to talk about our history, share our history, our stored history with others, and to get people in the city to use our other services and maybe perhaps decide they want to move here, live, work, and play.

Um, so that's gonna take a couple of trials to figure out what will work and what won't work.

So I I don't want to see a lot of times everybody wants to get the A and do something the first time and it and they get rid of it if it doesn't work.

Um and if it's successful, then they you know everybody's there, you know, who wrong.

But I think in this case, we need to do some trial and error, we need to whatever we need to do differently.

We cannot continue to do the same thing expecting a different result.

And we have too much here, and you know, right there at that visitor center telling people welcome telling people to come to Hampton and then they go go get here and they don't know what to do, where to go, what to do.

So I'm sorry, I'm going on and on and on, but I would like for you all to support both efforts.

I do support soundscapes, um, and I think I support everything else that has already been discussed.

Okay, can we can we do the pilot on here?

Because it's separate.

We understand the pilot's successful people continue anyway, so we could do the rest next year.

Well, that's I guess this I saw what they did with South City.

Okay, okay.

Okay, I don't know that that would just keep us from having reordered the thing.

Okay.

If that's accepted.

Okay, the only issue with that is I guess if we find that we need more, we'll have to use your contingency fund or something.

I don't know if $20,000 is enough.

It's 30 37, 30 35,000.

It's $35,000 is enough versus the other is probably too much money.

Yeah, the other was like a full scale, we had to do everything versus a pilot.

So I think what the mayor, he was asking me about this similarly to adding, and I know the vice mayor proposition that we add one of the items that wasn't on there, we could also delete one.

So if the idea is this year we would only focus on a pilot, and if we need more, we can take it out of contingency, but we do the pilot.

Do we also need to do the full scale one?

So we could remove the full scale one so you weren't ranking both the pilot and the full scale.

I'm I think he's asking if you're comfortable with that.

I'm comfortable with that as long as you know I don't know if we should raise it to 50.

I don't know that 36 is enough, but but we certainly won't be in a position to spend the 245.

So maybe we just keep it at the 36.

Um, because I want people to really try to work on this, not just say, okay, let me go get a bus company pull some people together.

Right.

I we need some some thought leadership here and some creativity and innovation.

Because we have we we have the foundation, we just we just got to get it off the ground and package it.

So yes, I'm I'm good with just taking the one off.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yeah, so uh I agree with that too.

So um I'm gonna go back to my request.

Um so can we add this?

Anybody opposed to adding um more lapping media and arts?

Anybody opposed to that?

At a lower cost, right?

Yeah, low cost, yeah.

Take a picture of it.

Now we had three.

Um I'm fine with uh I don't have a problem adding as everybody because Mary was saying if you start in ranking, you gotta reset.

That's fine because our program is set.

If you if you hadn't written them down, you might want to take a screenshot using your camera phone of what you did, and then you will know where you were.

No don't reset it yet.

They're taking screenshots.

We are deleting the we're deleting the the full scale of the Hampton to one.

Right.

Is there anything else you would like to change?

Because right now, what they're doing is removing the full scale um history uh tourism initiative and adding Allison Moore at 50,000, right?

That's what you were proposing.

Any other changes because we don't want to have to keep opening and closing it and all that now, Mary.

What Michelle wants to do is what is how much is her program?

I think it was 30 35.

But we can if if she's suggesting she doesn't think it's enough, it's the pilot.

It's a pilot.

I mean, my my suggestion was that was what staff's best estimate was.

Um obviously, if it if it ended up costing more, we have the flexibility of contingency to go to.

There would be no point of doing a pilot and not doing the pilot right.

Right.

So I don't know if you want us to bump up the number now.

If you can bump it to 50.

And just as to be clearer about bay days while you're doing it, add 200,000 to bay days, realizing it could be more or less depending upon the talent that's chosen.

Well, so considering bay days is gonna be not implemented until the following year.

Do you really need to see money this year?

Yes.

Yes.

Well, I don't know that well, I you because it would be in September and the fiscal year goes to June 30th, you'd have to make contracts and things like that before September.

Okay, thanks.

All right.

Any other changes that you all want us to make?

Changes more once, twice.

Will you tell them when it's ready so they don't start before you're ready?

Okay, so we're good.

All right.

We will get seven to that line.

Five minutes.

All right, so I'm um I do things a little different than you guys.

I am looking at the core things that we're supposed to be doing as a city.

All the things we're talking about are good, but we have core capabilities, and the staff needs more people and they need more tools.

So when I look at it, um, I know that we need a paralegal and we need an assessor.

Um, and um we need the permitting software, those were kind of like my top things, um, and then the small business development center to get the small businesses in things like the tour, you know.

Um, I think we should hire you know, get a tour company to come in.

We've got like you said, I am all for the course, but we don't need staff to learn how to be a tour guide.

There, there are companies that do that, and they can come in and um like the book that we got here, that's that's a great start for um all the different things that we have.

The other one is like the traffic cameras, the the cameras are generating money, and that money should be used to pay the district court for the extra police officers that they do.

So I don't know how we put that in here with zero.

So I want to do the tour, but I don't we but if we hire a company to do but not higher, if we have a company that comes in and does it, it's zero cost, but I think it's something we should do, and for the cameras, I think we should do it for the district court, but it should come out of the monies generated by the tickets.

So I don't know how to put those in and cut count them as zero.

So let me say a few things about those if I might, just for clarification.

The reason why I don't disagree that the camera program should pay for whatever it is, whether there was one that police wanted some more money, I think, too, for the camera support.

The challenge with that is we've been budgeting the revenue in the general fund.

We can't do that.

Yes, we can right now.

We can, we should finish it.

And what we did when we first put it there is we basically use it to pay for some of the public safety enhancements that we were doing in the city.

So we're good right now, unless and until they change the legislation.

And I don't think it has changed yet this year.

Um but that said, if we get more revenue, yes, any new revenue we could put to it.

But if you take the same fixed revenue and we say add the cost, I've got to it's still gonna impact the general fund budget.

I don't know if I'm making sense to you.

And I I just know that you know the citizens are very much that these cameras were moneymakers for the city, and they're they were supposed to be behavioral changers, not money makers.

So I just wanna if if we're getting so many tickets, like the one on Aberdeen Road, I think it was like I think I said 50,000 tickets, like it was it was a lot.

So if if the people are having to process that many tickets, then the monies that the tickets are generating should pay for the staff to review those tickets.

And we would assign the revenue to cover that cost, but I'm saying without what if I do that in the budget, unless the revenue is going up, and I'd have to ask Carl if the revenue is going up, but let's say for simplicity, I and if there's any press or media here or someone watching the tape, I'm not saying this is the amount of money because I don't know off the top of my head.

But let's say that there is a million dollars right now in revenue.

That million dollars has already been allocated to existing recurring expenses.

So if we were gonna take 50,000 off and of the revenue to pay for something someone was asking for with it, can we do that?

Yes, but I s that means the revenue estimate.

There's a 50, there's still a $50,000 imbalance that I've got to add one way or the other to the equation.

So that's why we were polling you on it.

Is it important enough to you that we do this for us to make that adjustment?

Well, and I know.

Well, we would technically from an accounting standpoint assign it as a cost for the program.

Because there was four or five in there.

I didn't know which one to pick because I don't know how much it generated, so I didn't know what to fix it.

I'd have to get an updated, you know, how it's tracking.

When we first put it in, we have two different kinds of programs.

We have the school zone program and we have the red light camera program.

Okay.

On the school zone program, we put in the revenue that we would estimate based upon what other cities did and the expense for all of the schools, knowing we weren't gonna bring be able to bring them all on at one time, with the commitment that if we didn't add a light, we wouldn't spend the appropriation.

So you wouldn't get the revenue, but you wouldn't have the appropriation, but we just put placeholder numbers effectively in there.

With the red light can't with the red light ones, we used it to cover some public safety cost with police and traffic engineering.

So we technically meet any definition as it relates to unless the there were some bills where the state would say you have to send the money to us.

That would cause us problems.

Um but in terms of meeting an allocation, it's in the general fund, but we're able to say here are public safety traffic engineering rate related expenses that go against the program.

So it wasn't done as a money maker, but the fact that we got that money, we had either expenses associated with the program, i.e.

the the cost of the cameras, perfectly fine, yeah.

The police review of it, traffic engineering supports like cones and signs and all that kind of stuff, and then any extra we put to those two broad categories, public safety and traffic engineering.

So I would say to people though, our residents though, if they say, you know, you're using it to offset general fund expenses, the answer is yes.

And if we didn't use that, we'd have to raise taxes or cut services.

So it's not as if it isn't benefiting the taxpayers ultimately.

So okay, so I guess I'm just saying before we do a lot of different programs, um, let's consider the the paralegal, the assessor, and the small business and the permitting software so that the people can do their job first and then we can add the fun stuff next.

So and then and I don't know how we put in like the tour, put in the tour, but I think we should hire or not hire, we should have a company come in to do it, and it wouldn't be anything out of our pocket, and they know how to do tours.

I would say for the not if they're a profit, a private company that does a tour.

Yeah, well, that's we say and I maybe Mary Fusier, I don't mean to put her on the spot can address this, but we've tried some of these ideas in the past, tried to get the private sector.

It's not like we haven't thought about these things.

Why won't you do XYZ?

And I can fill in all kinds of different things that we've talked about, but since this one's the history tour specifically, we've tried to get people to do it.

And what they normally say is we don't think that there's enough of a market to cover my cost.

So a pilot would basically be a way of proving the concept and then being able to give true market data to them.

Or it could also be used as sort of an incentive to the private sector company to come try it, and we'll guarantee your expenses up to X amount so that they come in and they and they see that it works.

But I promise you, if we had been able to pull this out without some financial incentive dollars, whether we do it ourselves or we use the dollars to incentivize a private sector, you know, interest for a build-up period to get it going, we would have done that.

So I do believe if if you want something materially to happen, we're going to have to have some dollars committed.

And I'm willing to say if you all agree, we try to use that as an incentive to a private sector company to come in and start up, you know, as opposed to we run it ourselves.

But if we can't get them to do it, we may have to do it ourselves to prove the concept.

But I agree in an ideal world, we would like the private sector to be doing a lot of this.

I just don't want the staff to have to try to do it as an extra duty and then not have enough time to do it right.

Because I think it's good.

Um I like it on time.

I'd like to uh add the umuse airport.

Um the airport study that was done recommended that that airport uh do a pivot to become an advanced mobility air commerce center.

Uh you know, it has great potential for a lot of the work that's already going on at NASA with uh advanced air mobility.

And um, you know, we in order in order for us to be a partner in that with Luca News, uh, we need to share in the cost of of the airport, or at least some of the operations of the airport and the pivot to advanced air mobility, but with the understanding that we're going to get a return uh on the uh you know revenue that's generated through the airport, and once that occurs.

And that obviously that's not gonna be overnight, it's not gonna happen you know, in in day one, uh, because we are talking about you know bringing new technology to the airport and finding the appropriate things, but I think you know, initially with you know a consultant coming in and helping to uh uh develop a plan for doing the pivot, uh I think it would be good for us to be on the front end of that uh that trans uh transformation of the air news airport uh ideally to let's say a new news Hampton Airport or Air Commerce Center or I will name that, but um I think you know Luca News is prepared to uh uh have us join as a partner on that, and uh so we this funds that are in here with four people ranked the green, uh would be beneficial for us to go in and fund that.

And I think the city manager has ways of being able to do the funding, uh, you know, the initial funding of that uh at least in year one.

Yeah, I I I had suggested to the team, I think I suggested to some of you when we talked about this that I would suggest at least again as a proof of concept, we use end of the year savings or one-time capital money.

Um, and then it may become a recurring expense, but knowing how much we had on the plate this year, and realizing that it would there would be startup costs that would be higher and then a recurring amount might go down substantially rather than plugging in recurring revenue at a higher level than what you might need perpetually.

Maybe we look at capital funding for that one-time sort of start up, figure out what it means.

Um I just want to further articulate, because I I believe I heard the mayor correctly, we would tie any commitment to not a status quo operation, but this pivot that he was describing, and that would be very clear.

We would make clear that there was language that there has to be some actionable items that result in the pivot that the regional report has suggested.

It's so I like to recommend that you uh the airport uh news airport, which is one of here as an outside.

Uh the second one I want to add while I'm while I'm talking is uh is uh actually the first item that's on there right now, and that is the uh funds um the uh homeless transition of housing uh because I think uh what we talked about with the new ordinance that we may expect to uh adopt here sometimes during the future that a part of that was making sure that we have the ability to have a place to get people off the streets and we're trying to move folks off the street.

A lot of times there's not the uh shelter space available.

Uh you know, sometimes that shelter space is limited, and I think what we have here with the budget is for us to be able to utilize uh hotel rooms to use as uh temporary shelter so that we would be more guaranteed that when we are trying to get a person off the street, there is a place that we can get them.

Uh I do know that uh you know we have some limitations on how long people can live in hotels, but if those folks are clients of uh human services departments and that's built into the ordinance to allow people to be uh in a hotel in extended period of time as long as they are receiving support services from the number or is that the it's number one, it's number one on there now.

Um this page one up there, yeah.

Okay, all right.

I second the um definitely the two that the mayor um brought forward.

I'm extremely excited about the uh the Newport News airport with NASA being in this area and having NASA wallops and trying to the region's trying to create that technology hub and with technologies that are being developed at NASA right now, um, and working with the um Gene Economic Development uh Partnership and others.

Um this is another one of those uh areas that is I think very pertinent to Hampton's future and the region because we have this the universities and the community colleges and the um the power, the brain power that we have in this region to get us to that next level and for us to be a technology hub like Raleigh and Charlotte and um research, you know, research triangle park and Raleigh and and other areas.

Um so this is an investment on our future and our uh brand as a city.

Um I think it's uh 54.

So advice maybe we're moving it in a jet.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, definitely it is here.

I think it was just on the news that that some companies have gotten behind uh the self-driving car and invested billions of dollars in that prize.

You know, we've got to move we've got to move forward and lean in on on this.

We're not ready, we'll miss the boat.

It will be too late.

It'll be too late.

Um I just had a question about the Virginia Symphony evening of hope.

Does somebody want to speak to that?

Yeah, I can address that one.

So the Virginia Symphony has long done on the South Side and evening of Hope event that is a combination of the opportunity to hear the symphony play at less expensive prices than normal rates, and also um sort of honoring uh violence prevention and uh my understanding is that like people who have been uh victims of homicide or things like that, they're given free tickets and stuff to come as a as a healing kind of thing.

Um our Comewealth attorney Anton Bell had talked with them about why not do it on the peninsula as well, and they explained that part of the challenge was it required a fairly hefty subsidy because it's not something that they're really making money on.

Um, and so he worked with the the group that has put that on.

There's a nonprofit that works with the Virginia Symphony on the South Side and found that the cost would be roughly sixty thousand dollars to do it at Ogden Hall.

So the thought was um he did get some money from Sentera to help underwrite that, and then was looking for basically they ended up needing roughly $30,000 in the end, um, some of which, I'm sorry, 40,000, some of which Anton was able to put up 10,000 out of some forfeiture or other monies that he has.

That left a deficit of 30,000.

For this year, DHGP is putting up 20,000 as an underwriter or sponsor of that, and then we were looking to either with city funds or arts commission funds if the arts commission agrees to support it to do the other 10,000.

So we've got the current year covered, but in the conversations with the symphony, they indicated they would do it every year, and then this would be a signature event for the city of Hampton to have the symphony at Ogden Hall every year.

And we as staff do believe that that's good not just to honor the violence prevention, but also for culturally having the Virginia Symphony perform in Hampton.

Because right now to see the symphony, you either have to go to Norfolk or you have to go to um Ferguson Center.

So we've got this year covered, but we would need our share of monies moving forward perpetually.

And ideally, we'd like to build that into the budget as opposed to having to cobble it together every year the way we had to do it this year.

Five minutes one.

Mary, uh, can you speak to two things?

The development coordinator for uh community development and also supplemental operating support for general research court.

I didn't think we were doing supplemental support to court.

So we don't we don't have to.

Um let me let me start in reverse order.

Does the general district court clerk asked us to supplement salaries?

And I told him no, we don't do that.

Same argument that we gave for public defender, we do not supplement people who are on the state payroll.

So his employees are on the state payroll.

These are not like our constitutional officers that are on the city payroll and the state hopes to fund.

These are fully 100% funded salaries approved by managed by the state personnel system.

And your long practice has been and councils before you, we don't supplement state employees on a state payroll.

That said, part of why he was asking for that was something we talked about earlier, which is that they've had a huge increase in court um uh cases because of the speed zone cameras and the red light cameras.

And so he said is people were having to work extra, like sometimes late, sometimes um under great stress, and so I asked him, might we do I mean I I would to give me some ideas that were not supplementing the pay directly, like increasing their salaries, but rather maybe something like could he hire a part-time person to help relieve some of that?

Could he um maybe do bonuses or something like that if we gave him some money?

So my suggestion there was and 25,000, frankly, he hasn't gotten back to me on the details of all of that.

But I mean, I was just like, what might it cost for a you know, 40?

I mean a 20-hour a week employee.

So um that was sort of a ballpark number.

We don't have to do it.

I do feel like you know, we are somewhat responsible for the extra caseload.

Um so it was just an idea to try to help, but um it would not go to actual pay for them unless he did like a bonus or something like that.

It is unclear yet whether or not he sent me an update and said he's not sure he could actually hire a part-time person with city funding.

I'm a little confused by that because we have a city funded full-time position.

So I sort of push back with him on that.

Um so we're we would still have to work out what that is, but that notion was doing something nominal to recognize the extra workload.

Um, and we would like the other things assign it to the cost of the red light and speed zone camera programs, but we still have to come up with the recurring revenue for it.

Generally wouldn't have gone to the comp boy request.

To add a new position that's state funded, yes.

Sure.

But this what he was asking for correct.

Um on the um development coordinator, uh, since Kim Michael's here, I'll let her specifically address that.

I assume it's just another person to help with the coordination.

But yes.

So basically, what that would be is to have somebody directly in the DSC to ensure that whether things come through the corridor or people in the DSC, it's just somebody to make sure that that coordination is smooth and that nothing is strong and that the appearance doesn't receive any or go through any hospitals or anything like that.

So it's just another opportunity for us to improve customer service by having that person make sure that things go smoothly throughout the entire permit and review process.

So we currently assign people for big projects, right?

So this would be for lower projects, correct?

Well, like I know Skylar does some of this too.

So if you could explain the difference between this and what you already have, is it an extra person or is it a whole different function?

Yeah, this is essentially a separate person.

So right now we have Skylar who does our small business coordination.

So she works hands-in-hand with our small businesses to make sure not just as it relates to CDD, but as it relates to health, other departments make sure that they know every step of the process.

We also have a um executive project manager, Joshua George.

He essentially works with applicants on our larger developments to work with them from concept plans to working them through any use permits or rezonings they have to do all the way down through our our permitting engine again, just kind of that person to be hand in hand with the bigger developers.

Does this be the process and line things?

Absolutely.

Yes, absolutely.

So this person specifically would be for any other general type of permits, just making sure that again, whether it comes in through our online system or in-person, just making sure that the transition from when we get the application through cleaner view, site plan, all of those things are smooth and efficient through the process.

Yeah, well, I think yeah, people were I think people are working on it as they go, right?

We only have one submitted now, but that's likely because someone might have been able to do all this in advance, and other people haven't been able to do it.

So if you haven't started working yet, it sounds like the conversation's dying down, please start working.

We want to give you whatever time it takes for seven of you to complete it, because we realize you had first thought you were going to be doing you know, nine or seven, depending upon the category.

Now you're doing more.

So we want to give you whatever time and space you need to complete the activity.

Do you want to sign that?

Okay, scalpers.

I just want to make sure.

Oh, do you want to do it?

Oh, so you have presenters.

So I'll tell you the white.

I'll tell you what is at all.

And we're going to go ahead and do that.

The paralegal assessor for Libby.

Assessor.

Assessor for Libby.

Paralegal for Courtney.

S BDC.

Small business development.

Six one and fifty-four.

What about the case?

He was asking which ones I had asked for.

Was there a question or I missed it?

I don't really know.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

Is everybody else done?

Three more.

So they can see the fold that you need to be able to see it.

So we'll just adjust that.

So we just do the scrolling now.

I mean, there's really not much work to report now on this.

We're agreed.

We can do the extra stuff.

Yeah, that's what we've got the extra stuff.

But after this is done, we can scroll up and we can write straight towards the shouldn't have to go.

She's hoping that's actually.

I have no idea.

It depends on how much money goes.

I don't have that stuff.

Change anything control.

You could just say that.

I mean, I thought you meant like I had someone asking me if he's in the reason.

No.

But no, you couldn't do one thirteen and do you want to do that?

But one of them is too hold.

I was trying to figure out how to word it without saying it.

Could you tell?

I kinda wasn't sure.

I want to say something publicly.

You know what you get at the end of the day.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I was it's okay, because we had to vote.

And I was like, I asked, how do I say she thought I do okay?

She knows them a lot better.

Well I was in that meeting, she probably finds to say.

Okay, all right, yeah, because I was asked your opinion yet.

I was trying to give you smoke signals across the table to go.

How do I say it?

This a lot.

I was trying to be very careful.

Good.

All right, as long as you can okay.

Is that right?

Oh, are you still going?

Because you're you're trying to keep us all straight.

Well, you were listening to people talking and other people working.

Yeah, to manage the meeting, not work on it.

That's why it needs to be the same.

Well, it needs to be conditional.

I am not gonna give you a million dollars.

Just put in a pot and do it again as to you.

And I I that was one of the conditions I had with Mary.

Oh my god, I'll just give him the money to fix it.

A roof they should have fixed.

Mayor, may I suggest two minutes?

If you finished and you're so inclined, I see some of you have already done it, but this afternoon snacks are here.

So I asked the mayor if people could take a break while people are wrapping up.

So he said, feel free to take a snack break.

That's what you wanted to do if you are done.

So what you'll see again, we deployed the weighted ranking.

So the the highest rated thing overall with the weighted voting would have been the homeless transition um housing.

That's the hotel program that the mayor articulated.

And then from there on, obviously, you can read it for yourselves.

It will show you the order of ordinal rank amongst the seven of you all.

So we'll slowly scroll so you can just see how things turned out.

And if there's any discourse you want to have about it, we can do that, but we would be moving on to capital after we're done scrolling through it.

Okay, now you may begin.

Thank you.

Oh, it's also on your iPad, apparently.

But when it disappears up there, it's going to disappear on your iPad too.

Yes, ma'am.

Oh, sorry.

Councilman.

Oh, yes.

Now of course I haven't done the math, but I would hope that for example, there's a foyer officer on here that ended up ninth.

And I know that's a high priority for the city attorney's office to be able to have that service, or it's it's just gonna degradate ability to respond to our constituents.

So I hopefully so I'm glad you brought that up.

It's a good point to remember remind.

We talked about this at the outset, but to remind that you are giving me your preferences.

But as manager, when I give you a manager's recommended budget, if there's something I feel absolutely needs to be in there as a fiduciary agent of yours, I will put it in there.

So the FOIA officer is a really good example of that.

Um we have so many FOIA requests that come in, and I want to be clear, a lot of these are not from our citizens, even because I know that that someone mentioned this might be a reflection that there's a lack of uh trust.

Um a lot of these actually come from like title companies and developers and things like that, wanting CDD to basically do their work for them.

But we don't have the luxury of saying we're not going to do your work for you because it is a public record.

So as we get more and more of those kinds of requests, and we have the statutory requirements to turn them around.

If the one person that Courtney currently has doing that cannot do it, I have a fiduciary responsibility to you all to say we really must add this position.

And I hope you all would want me to do that, and I will do that.

Now, your prerogative, of course, is once I give you a manager's recommended budget.

If you don't agree with it, you can take anything out you want.

But I want to assure you all if I think there's something that would get us in trouble, you know, from a fiduciary standpoint, whether it's a legal trouble or a you know, really big problem with the public, I'm going to flag that for you all.

That's all right.

Okay.

All right.

Any other questions on the rankings that may appear?

You said you're going to print these.

We're going to print them out and give them to you, and we'll also display them in another way.

I understand they can display them in another way that makes it easier to understand, but this just gives you a sense of the ordinal ranking for today.

And we will give you documentation probably by Friday, if not Friday, early next week.

Okay.

All right.

So we're going to do basically the same thing now with the Capitol.

Um, following the same suggestion that Councilwoman Mugler made earlier, and that you all agree to.

I think it would be appropriate, Mr.

Mayor, if you're agreeable as the chair to let people make any case they might want to for a capital item.

And I see Councilman Hutt has your hand up.

All right, Councilman Calkin.

Yes, sir.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Um, I know I talked to the city manager about this updating on our master plans.

I know we had already um kind of talked about this and and uh wanted to update it, but I think it is very imperative due to us continuously wanting to move our our city forward amongst the seven strategic priorities that we have that we um update those master plans and it heed to um the planning along with the um along with help with the uh staff of of doing that to um enhance our uh areas that that need to be um with the master plans.

Um really quick, I had another one, and this one is very minor, but it's one I thought about ever since the sign went up.

Number 46, the Cunningham Overpass Illuminated sign.

It's a very nice sign, as I stated, I know it's something very minor.

Um, but um uh I always was very proud of that sign coming on the interstate when I'm coming home from that area.

That's how I knew I was home when I saw that that big Hampton sign.

And one thing I had told Mayor even before I got on council that uh that sign need to be lit up, you know, at night to you know see it.

It'll definitely uh, you know, when people are coming down and they see, oh wow, we're in Hampton, you know, type thing.

So um I would I would like for you all to uh support it as uh needed.

Uh but thank you.

That's all that's all I have.

Vice Mayor Brown.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor.

Uh the I want to uh speak just a little bit on the high school athletic field upgrades.

Uh this is a very, very important uh initiative for this reason.

Um we have touted uh our city um as a sports tourism destination as a sports tourism uh destination and uh if we fail to maintain these fields, uh we could suffer liability, somebody got injured on the field, uh, particularly with uh Darling Stadium with an astro turf out there.

You know, we have a warranty on it, but if we don't maintain those fields, uh we're gonna that warranty uh may not cover uh abuse or not maintaining uh the surface itself.

And so to wait until uh 2030 is is it's uh really it's that's a long time out.

Um but we are losing um opportunities to host regional meets, local meets, some local meets, state meets, because our fields have not been maintained properly.

And so I would much rather for us to uh be forward-looking and do this now versus putting a band-aid over cancer.

And this is what is at this is going to end up happening.

So I would hope uh my colleagues will consider uh that this is um one of uh as we talk about leisure services and attracting people to our community to live here, work here, play here.

Uh I just think that this is one of the things that people come to to our city for.

We got water, we got beaches, we got activity, uh but our parks, our fields, our athletic fields, uh young people are playing soccer now.

There's useful there's use football, there's uh an increase in people want to do lacrosse.

It's just a number of things that I think we need to look at if we're gonna be a destination and out of past people parts in leisure services.

These fields are tatama and very important.

So I would appreciate consideration uh for that item as well.

Thank you, Mayor.

Okay, Councilman Brown.

I'm sorry.

Okay.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

You could do it over time.

I'd like my colleagues to consider uh number 70.

The tiny home uh development.

I think we're on the right project uh or the path forward uh for this.

It was great to when we visited Utah to see how beneficial that was for the unhoused.

Um I just think we could go for a program um that has training to graduate into home ownership uh for our unhouse, and I think that'll be a great opportunity for it.

Top nine.

You're gonna do all of them.

Thank you.

No, I just draw the attendance number 49 on the list of War Memorial Stadium restrooms.

Uh War Memorial Stadium was built in 1948, and these restrooms that they're seeking restoration funds for our original to the park.

We have thousands of visitors come through that park every year.

Um it is a reflection on this community.

Um that come to that park are from Hampton.

People are from all across the country.

Children, uh young people come play on the screen here in Hampton.

They are from all over the United States, and their families come to watch them play in this stadium from all over the United States.

We also host the apprentice school baseball team in the stadium, and uh that also includes young people from all over this country and their families from all over this country that come to this stadium to watch their young people play.

They also host AAU and high school Virginia uh Virginia High School League games and tournaments are played in this stadium.

Um it is not unusual for there to be a geyser gusher coming out of one of the toilets during any given game time.

Um it really is a project that needs attention.

Um the um the stadium does depend on the city for these kinds of um improvements.

Uh this request has come before council at least twice prior to um today's um review.

I would hope you would give consideration to this project.

Thanks.

Vice Mayor Brown.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor.

Again, uh attention to number 33.

This is the continuation project of Darling Stadium uh repairs.

Um again, we're talking about sports tourism and generated generate revenue for our city, uh, but the restrooms there uh need to be uh improved, the ticket booths, um, HVAC systems, there's a number of things you have it on your sheet, concession stand 88 completion or compliance.

There's a number of things you have on your sheet, concession stand 80 acre of completion or compliance.

Again, Darling Stadium is beginning to become a destination for not only football for track, for soccer, for lacrosse, volleyball, and a number of things.

So we're drawing people here to be a part of the Dollar Stadium.

And in times past, we have gone to, for instance, your regional football playoffs.

We've gone to Richmond, you've gone to Lynchburg, where for the higher level playoff games.

But we should be, we should be hosting those events here.

Versus up, we go into another community and putting money in their coffers.

We have a state of the art turf field.

And this is the big this is not the start of a new project.

This is the big, I mean, this is the finish of the project.

So I think it I think it behooves us to finish this project and advertise and market uh us as having one of the premier uh venues in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and that is the historic Darling Stadium.

So I would ask your consideration uh to look at doing this as one of our capital improvement projects as well.

Thank you, Mayor.

Councilwoman Hawke.

Um I have two other ones that I would like for you all to um consider.

Just wanted to bring it to your attention.

Uh one is uh number 71, the pickleball courts for the recreation division.

I don't know if anybody's been following, but pick pickleball is hot across the country, and so we definitely need to um I was just talking to someone who is from here, however, they live out of town and came back to visit family and was looking for a pickleball court because that's what they like to do back home.

And I know um talking to um the Parks and Rec Director Dale Crittenden, um, something that he wanted to do because um in forward thinking is something that um is definitely becoming a demand for so um I would like for you all to consider that one as well.

And hold on.

Um it is I know it's number two.

Page four page uh it's number seventy one.

They not as well.

Page eight.

Page two.

I'm sorry.

It's page two page two.

I see it.

Oh, and um the other one I would like for you guys to consider is Blueberry Gap Farm paid phase one.

I don't know if you all have been out there to Blueberry Gout Farm, but it is a it is an attraction for for children and and families, but it needs a little work, and so I would like to put you know some money behind that to enhance that area just the just just a bit um so that we could definitely make that a an experience and uh and a great time for the the children and um the families.

I know um it's a place as well that groups of kids go to, like on the field trip and and things like like that.

So I would like for that to see to be in enhanced as um future-wise with some of the plans that we have to enhance that area as as well.

Thank you.

We all use the following numbers.

Councilwoman Hawker already mentioned the master plans, and we know how important that is.

We all agree we need to do that before we proceed, but I think we also need to look at uh item number one of Bill Action Number 13, which is uh the infrastructure improvements that we need to consider to get our uh development sites ready.

Uh, you all may recall that uh Buffalo.

I mentioned that when Buffalo in two proposals that we've seen from Buck Road, both of them both came with a request of the city to do the infrastructure uh development for that.

But I want to let Linda uh talk about the need for that because we're not just talking about Buffalo, we're talking about multiple multiple development sites in the city that we need to get ready for development, and now we forgot to come in to drop the big numbers on the things that we know you want to answer for.

So Linda's back here.

Thank you, Mayor Gray.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Good afternoon, Glenn.

This CIP project was submitted to ensure that our sites, our cannabis sites are ready to execute one.

As Mayor Ray has shared as we uh share with the members of council.

We know we have the long range plans.

We just want to enhance their value and their readiness, whether it be pump stations, whether it be parking infrastructure, whether it be acquisition, all geared towards accelerating the economic activity for the general benefit of the general fund in the city.

Um becomes a question of us not having to identify dollars, but we have dollars available on the table to execute strategically.

Yeah, again, that's that's over a period of time.

It's not all up.

There you go.

Okay.

Um so I agree kind of with whatever everybody said.

I would like to add in um the zoning code update.

We talked about the um the different um uh master plans, but there are codes as well, and we worked with Mr.

Silver.

So that's number 10.

Um I'm gonna be boring and also say the heavy off-road equipment for the shop for public works, so they can fix all the stuff that we keep breaking, and the cars keep seeming to run over.

And then um, and that's number sixty-one, and then um the budget book software, um, the unisolutions.

I know um we're trying to automate some of our stuff here, and um well, Mr.

Daughter's wonderful, he's not gonna be here forever, and so we're gonna need to replace him with three or four computers and ten or twelve people.

So I would um I would suggest that.

Um, and just as food for thought for you guys, um, there was a chair lift in there for the the building.

My only concern with the chair lift is that it won't fit a wheelchair.

So if we're gonna consider that one, I would prefer we put a whole elevator and I know they don't make them anymore.

Um there's a chair lift, it's number one.

Didn't fit a wheelchair you say.

It doesn't fit an elevator.

The request is for a chair lift.

Uh-huh.

I think they're talking about the you roll the wheelchair in and go.

Okay, it takes a wheelchair too.

Yes.

That's what that is.

Okay, it's a little thing.

Okay, then never mind.

Okay.

Okay, I was thinking it was just the one that you sit in like in the house.

In the house, no, no.

No, no, it would it would lift only mechanically the chair.

It's a wheelchair.

Okay.

Councilman Fair.

Thank you, Ms.

Mayor.

I just have a couple questions about some of the items that are on the list.

So, for example, the Northampton fire station.

Um I just kind of wanted to get a feel for where that should be in the priority list, considering it's the fire station, and that's in my so we have been embarking upon phased upgrading and or replacement of aged fire stations based upon the age of the facility and the condition of the facility.

So, as you know, we completed the with the next one that's in process with design and then construction will be VIBAS.

And this was the next one on the chiefs list.

So there isn't a set date by which it needs to be done per se.

It is fully functional and operating, but it is the next most in need of being updated.

Okay.

Thank you.

Um, and then the police academy uh renovations and the Phoebus Library.

Well, no, not the other the streetscape or Phoebe.

Is that those I just was kind of trying to figure out where I might consider them in my part list because everybody else already had have mentioned the items that were most on my mind.

And then the Muggler Bridge was the other one that I'll kind of because it the mug is that the bridge that goes um, the one from Mellon Street over so I would say that that would be a priority if we get some tourism stuff in there, because I could see that bridge being key to getting people from Fort Monroe to um to feed, you know, in another kind of way.

So all of those just for the record are the ones that the uh VIBA's partnership talked with you about in their small area plan conversations, that's where they came from.

And we worked with them to develop the cost estimates.

Okay, I see.

Okay, thanks.

But are out of the four or five that I mentioned, are there any that you see from your perspective as a power priority?

Some of the other items we mentioned earlier.

Some of the well, I mean none of these would be on here if we didn't think they were worthy.

So let me be clear.

I don't want people to think I'm picking favorites here.

Um I think if you were thinking about what to do with Phoebus, particularly because they went to the effort of doing that work.

One of the most immediate things we could do is deal with some of the streetscape stuff and like the alleyways and things like that that they wanted.

That would make an immediate impression, and they're lower dollar values than say the Muggler Bridge issue.

Um and so if I were you, I'd be wanting to get immediate impact so people could see some immediate things.

That's not to say that all of them aren't good ideas or worthy of consideration, but that's probably where I would look to go to for those kinds of projects first.

Thank you.

Just to prove the concept and get people excited and jazzed and things like the bridge, while again important, they are gonna take a while to deliver.

And so if that if we put all the money into that one and people don't see anything for three or four years, they're gonna get frustrated.

Okay, thank you.

The point did you want to say something?

Uh Jason looked like he was wanting to say something.

There was a question on the next five CAD RMS systems.

Oh, I didn't I didn't hear that question.

I was getting rid of bringing it up.

About K and RMS.

So yeah, maybe you had ask questions about the CAD RMS suite.

Um, that is primarily used by police and fire for emergencies.

Right.

Um, the actual upgrade of the system, which was put in in the late 1990s, is around six million dollars.

Uh, but it'd be phasing or several years of the first year of around four million.

Right.

Well, in reading the notes, I mean our CA system is 30 almost almost 30 years old.

I can't imagine you know, uh public safety operating on an outdated 30-year-old mutated dispatch and record management, and and what they're noting here is that the the current vendor on that system is phasing it out and you know, doing limited work in terms of improvements and repairs and all of that, and only doing the minimum.

So it seemed like we were operating on borrowed time with the system that old.

So um I you know I didn't see anybody else here for public safety, but I thought we needed to bring that.

Yeah, and I appreciate that.

And I didn't hear that question.

I apologize.

Uh no, I'm sorry.

So I I wouldn't ask you we saw it, I guess we saw that.

I I okay, I I definitely concur that this is an important project, and there are different ways of potentially funding it.

The last time we did an upgrade, we actually um did a lease finance purchase of that.

So we could look at different ways of structuring that.

I think the the staff were requesting to do it sooner rather than later, both for the reasons you mentioned, but also they'll be moving into the new uh facility that you purchased, and it would be easier to install the new one there and then start there with the new one as opposed to having to take the current one and move it.

Because if you take the current one and move it, there is downtime.

Now I will say we all have regional backup systems, so like York County helped us before, York County could help us in the transition.

So I don't want to I don't want to panic you and say there's no way to do it with the current system, but added to what you know that the point the mayor made, which is that it is an older system, and there's gonna be less and less support of that system suggests that this might be the right time to do it.

But in fairness, I gotta be fully transparent and say we can operate with the current one.

We're not having you know multiple failures or anything like that, but you are living on borrowed time without a doubt.

So um doing it in concert with the move would both address that and also allow us to operate our current one in the current facility while they set up the new facility and move over and turn one off and start the other one, you know, almost contemporaneously.

What number was that, Mary?

Um I need to double check the number.

It is number 20, sorry.

It's that one right there, uh number one.

This number one it's listed four up there, but it's number one.

Okay, and as Jason mentioned, although it's six million, four million would be immediate, then the other two would be the next year.

Okay.

I have a question.

Yes, uh council.

Um West Marcury Boulevard median safety fence.

Isn't that being funded by Vita?

Most most of what you see out there, and there's some finishing up of that is being done with VDOT, but there's parts of it that weren't covered with the V dot project.

So I'll let Jason or Michael explain which parts this pertains to.

But as he said, this is to pick up the end caps and the other parts that weren't along that corridor.

Okay.

Again, just for clarification, you're going to be ranking all of them.

And again, the reason why we're asking you to do that, even though we won't be able to afford all of them.

First off, you do have a five-year plan you're working with, so it gives us a little bit more flexibility.

Second of all, if we get into the year savings money, knowing where you would go, that helps us.

And as you can see, there's a wide range of values here.

So that's why we're asking you, since it's a fairly easy system to use to go ahead and do all of them.

Very, very lengthy.

Right.

And that is, you know, the have the things to do.

You know, the uh what I can't remember all the terms you use, but is uh social interaction, social openness, openness.

And uh and aesthetics are all about it's all about having things to do and having moving to it and all of that.

Yeah, the aesthetics was really big on there.

Yeah, aesthetic.

Open this social offerings and aesthetics.

Six cities over three years.

I was I started taking notes for the first 40 minutes.

Yeah, my notes got got worse the longer it went on as well.

I'm being paid to do this presentation.

She was and she was determined, even when it was.

I'm going to finish.

Yeah, I could like she was not going down.

I just have one more slide.

And like this, push them off.

Period, I'm done.

Yeah.

And everybody was like I could tell she won't have it when she left the stage because when she she left off.

Um bring the king might with his legs.

You push me off my head and happen.

Yeah, you can.

Satisfaction versus attachment.

You gotta understand the circumstances of the glacier in.

Our context is we started in all time.

We have three just so you know you don't need to come back session now.

Yeah, it'll give you the results you can see them on there.

Okay, all right.

Oh yeah.

One man is six hours.

She said maybe 10 minutes.

It would be more sense to recess the meeting maybe city call to finish closed sessions, etc.

Which I was gonna then come to ask you procedurally, we could do that.

That's me.

I'm done.

And not come back in here.

It's the way I agree.

All right, we're at seven.

So we'll take a moment again to just scroll through.

So you can see again, don't worry about capturing it all because we will print it out for you.

Um, but we can see that master plan redevelopment implementation and the actual work of doing the master plans came out on top, followed by tiny home, and then so forth and so on.

So we'll just scroll down, Sam, and start doing that.

You also have it on your um iPad screens there.

If you want to look at it, I realize that some of these things can be eye test for us all.

All right, you're almost done.

Two more questions.

This is where we go back to re-poll the taxing question, the tax rate.

All right.

Um you may recall it.

We asked you what your ideal tax rate would be.

We always come back and ask it a second time.

Now that you've seen all the things before you, both in terms of the compensation results that you see on the screen as well as what we just did with your priority rankings.

I also had a request.

If necessary to accomplish what we want to accomplish.

And some people said they have a preferred tax rate, but they might be open to considering that.

So we bifurcated that question.

So you're gonna get two questions.

Your first question is gonna be what's your preferred?

And then the second one behind that after we get the results will be are you open or not to a tax rate increase?

Now, mind you, we're not at this point asking because I don't even have revenue estimates to know where we would be traditionally, and unless you tell me otherwise, your very first priority is these compensation things.

After we analyze what we've already done, then these compensation results, and then we start to work down your list.

So I don't yet know can we do all of that without a problem?

Umce I get revenue estimates, you will get revenue estimates, and we'll talk about is there enough to do all of this?

And if not, what you want to do?

But the question was posed could we bifurcate those questions to see if there was any willingness whatsoever, if it were needed to consider that.

So that's why you're now gonna have two sets of questions on your final thoughts on the tax rate.

So we want to go to the first one.

Yeah.

I say waiting on tech support.

Okay.

I go for no taxes.

I don't have the magic button push.

There you go.

Having reviewed your priorities and available revenues that at least as we know it at this point.

What is your preferred tax rate?

One more.

Everybody done we're we appeared to miss in one.

There it is.

Okay.

There we go.

All right, thank you.

Then the next question again.

I want to be really clear in case there's any media citizens or anybody in here.

We're not necessarily saying we're gonna need to do this.

We're not necessarily saying we're gonna need to do this, but should we need it to deal with unfunded mandates from the state and/or the compensation challenges we have?

Would you be open to talking about it?

I'm open to an increase to cover the cost of unfunded band-aids.

Sure.

Gotta talk about it.

Waiting on one more.

Okay, now we have all seven.

All right, thank you.

Again, one last time we'll summarize all this, get it all the data to you so you have it.

Um the public will get very similar kinds of exercises.

I don't know that we have enough of these devices for them to rank order on the way that you did them, but we will be asking them about their priorities around all of these topics that we talked today, and we'll be getting you that data after the completion of the I value um polling.

So I want to thank you and basically say we're done with the budget retreat aspect of this, unless you have to teach things you want to talk about for today before we completely wrap up.

I know the mayor had asked if we might talk about how you might if you have any immediate thoughts about what if anything you'd like to change in the future.

For instance, the way we started doing some of this changed because y'all were very frustrated or prior, some of you were fire straight past we had to do dots and had staff and everybody around you and you couldn't think on your own.

So we always aim to get better, whether you had those thoughts today or you have those thoughts afterwards.

Please let us know if there are things you would like to do differently.

Um ideas have been surfaced, for instance, it's hard to rank small dollars against big dollars, and there might be different ways you want us to configure things, so that's why I'm opening that up for any feedback.

Councilwoman Campbell.

I appreciated the conversation to hear what everybody was thinking, so I thought that was invaluable.

You mean the part about just sharing what your priorities were?

Yeah.

I thought that was good.

Councilwoman Mugler.

Um I thought the process today went very well.

Um, with the exception of having to re-enter our answers one time.

But um, but I think what you all have brought about the Slido was uh the software was very good, efficient, it did exactly what we needed it to do in terms of weighting the answers and um and really giving us good streamlined um responses very quickly.

Um, and so really applaud staff for working together as a team to to give us the process that we had today.

I think leading up today was uh a little bit um all over the place, and maybe we just need to do a little bit more preliminary conversating conversations about the budget and some of these things so that we when we do have this final product ready to put before us, some of those other things have filtered out.

Um but I thought all in all it was uh uh a really good experience today.

Vice Mayor Brown.

Yeah, um I would like to see us consider how we might be able to get smaller projects.

Uh, because I may want a smaller project, but today it may not have been one of my top priorities.

I mean, maybe we're to uh maybe subdivide that into another category if it if it takes given the manager the authority to do more what those more projects call for.

It I think it helps me to make the the best decisions on the project that I know we should really consider.

We could find some way to do that because I mean if I'm looking at a project like this is a hypothetical two thousand dollars for a hard hat, you know.

I mean yeah, we need it, but I mean they need it a day.

Right, okay.

So this this we could find a way to do that, a better process, that would be good for me.

Councilwoman Ferb.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Um I also want to applaud the staff for coming together to make this process a lot easier.

I have to admit I when I came in, I did not think that it would go this smoothly, and I was a little bit stressed out about it.

A lot stressed out about it.

Um the software uh really made it a lot easier for us to pivot the pivot that we had to do 24 hours or so to go to six hours.

I have to admit I when I came in I did not think that it would go this smoothly and I was a little bit stressed out about it a lot stressed out about it the software uh really made it a lot easier for us to to pivot the the the pivot that we had to do 24 hours or so 36 hours um so sometimes having uh tools is is it just shows how important it is to have good tools to work with um I also echo vice mayor's um comments around um some sort of a category categorizing of of how to handle um what I consider smaller dollar item requests that could be dealt with in a contingency fund or something like that I also think that um it would help possibly to everything is we have the strategic priorities in here but it would be kind of nice to have some sort of an overall picture that's around those strategic priorities because I think that makes it easier for me and for us and the citizens that are watching this or listening to this to get an eye a better reinforcement of what our strategic priorities are and then how do they play into the larger picture of how you're running the day-to-day operations of the city um so that might be something to just chew on um a little bit for for for next time for us to have that view um because I think that might because then I got to thinking we were talking about individuals which I thought was extremely productive where we wanted folks to support some of the initiatives that we see as important to the city um but I then I was kind of like well okay so did we hit excellence in government did we hit you know all the major did everybody get a little something um so just and I know you're gonna do that as part of your um due diligence as these as the manager that something like that might help a little bit as well.

I think one of the things that you you did in the process I guess Brian did it is those projects that are maintenance related you know to not bother including maintenance you know if it truck needs to be fixed fixed truck you know and not give us question of should we put your truck rate that you know some things just need to be done and you just do those things you put that off the side and it's not really give us the rating.

I still wonder I guess that's what where vice mayor and councilwoman Fairby were going with this but I still think that there's a way to you know kind of screen out the smaller projects because you you know you got some you got you know you know some personnel things on there that are maybe a number one ranking in the department you know but you're not what we're mixing that up with a $20,000 request that we probably could could figure out how to fund.

And I know you say you got to look at them because there may be a whole lot of $20,000 items that lead up to a bigger number but um I think if there's a way to figure out how to kind of take those out in a different category if that if that's the way we do it but so we don't have to kind of spend our few that we rank.

But I I don't know I thought I know we talked about you know we started off with doing one through seven and then two three nine I think on another sheet and then we ended up doing all of them but it really didn't take that long to do all of them once you know once we got into it so maybe going forward if it's not too cumbersome um I and I mean I'm talking about the way we the way we ended up doing it.

It was just very easy to move your things around on a ranking sheet here on the on the on the tablet I thought.

Software choice councilwoman yes if we didn't have that software it would have and I was at all like that.

Yes I would be ball headed now.

And we would not have we wouldn't have asked you to do it if we so I if we're gonna have to rank whatever 27 plus 30 some I if we don't have the software that would be said the software made it easier once we got here and started doing it but uh other than that I think we were all saying we wish we didn't have so much of these debate but once you got into it it was pretty easy to drag and drop councilman boom thank you thank you Mr.

Mayor for the staff I just want to say thank you this did a great job.

It's my second year ranking um the tablets were definitely uh asset um made things a lot smoother appreciate that ability to let everyone speak on what they thought that their top rankers would be like that was helpful also support each other's and whatever we thought um needed for it so great great job to make that doing councilwoman um I just want to thank um the city manager and her staff as well as the um budget department lawyer and everyone that was uh involved here but one of the things that I would I was like when we have these budget retreats is that it allows the employees to uh see us collaborating together as a um council working together on the um on the development and uh future of our uh city that this is something they don't get to see very often and uh it's a it's a time of of them getting to see us doing doing that so

ranking um the tablets would definitely uh ask that um make things a lot smoother appreciate that ability to let everyone speak on what they thought that their top rankers would be like that was helpful also support each other's and whatever they come to um so wait great uh debate for everyone councilwoman um i just want to thank uh the city manager and her staff as well as the um budget department lauren and everyone that was uh in ball here but one of the things that i will be glad when we have these budget retreats is that it allows the employees to uh see us collaborating together as they um council working together on the um on the benefit and uh future of our uh city that this is something they don't get to see very often and uh it's uh it's a time of of them getting to see us doing doing that so um I just wanted to say thank you um for continuously um improving us in our process because when I first came on council we were doing the dots on the on on the wall and uh things so this has come a a a a great way for us to uh and enhance and be technology savvy in and doing our so thank y'all so much there's no other comments I just want to thank you for applauding the staff I was gonna that was gonna be my last comment because you probably don't realize how much work goes into preparing all of this not just today but all the things that led up today like the various polling and the worksheets and all that and there have been some late nights because we have such a dedicated team and they wanted to get it right and they wanted to get it perfect and get it out to you and so I appreciate those of you who took the time and I know you were reflecting everyone's sentiments whether they said it or not but I wanted to echo that we have a really great team and um when we get in here and it goes smoothly it's because they've done all that preparation work so thank you for recognizing them and allowing me to recognize them and not to sound like a kiss up or anything like that but I'm really proud of you all and how I mean this was something new where Councilwoman Maggore suggested you all share your ideas but when I looked at the ratings you all really listen to each other and I gotta tell you that's really rare I I don't you often do like I do as a local government nerd and watch other council meetings.

I watch other council meetings it doesn't work that way in other places so you all should be really proud of yourself that you a recognize you'd like to hear from each other and not only did you give each other the time and space but you obviously heard each other and your rankings reflected that you heard each other so that's super cool.

It makes me very proud and I think the staff I'm speaking for this time um they're very proud to work for white people that are open and honest and you know share information with each other and even if you don't get everything you want or it doesn't go the way you want you're very collegial so it I think we all make a good team together thank you.

We're done okay so we uh ready for closed session and so I need the clerk to uh read the protocol closed session motion required for your closed session today is to go being the closed session pursuant to section 2.2-3711A through three and five for discussion of potential expansion of an existing business and we can include potential disposition of publicly held property in the recruiter area Hampton Road Center North where no previous announcement has been made about the business interest and expanding in Hampton and where discussion in an open meeting would adversely affect the city's negotiating strategy second um Catherine may I get that never mind that's we just we we can finish it there originally we were going to come back here sorry my my my apologies I thought it involved you but then I noise it didn't it's been moved and seconded to convene the closed session is Councilman Bowman Vice Mayor Brown Councilwoman Campbell Councilwoman Fairby Councilwoman Harper Councilwoman Mugler Mayor Gray I and uh we will convene at uh 4 p.m across the hall next no next where we were for lunchrooms e so take everything with you and uh we will uh do closed session in that room and then we will also reconvene and open session so four o'clock next door to certified there would be no other business after the certification for the recording public in attendance