The Hampton City Council met on April 8, 2026, at 6:31 PM in Council Chambers, 22 Lincoln Street, Hampton, VA. The meeting adjourned at 9:08 PM. All seven council members were present. The council approved a consent agenda, held public hearings on four items, heard extensive public comment, and debated a controversial ordinance to prohibit camping and storage on public property, which passed 5-2 with a six-month review provision. Appointments to Virginia Municipal League policy committees were also made.
Good evening and welcome to the uh Hampton City Council legislative session. Uh, Madam Clerk, will you call a roll, please? Councilman Bowman. Present. Vice Mayor Brown. Here. Councilwoman Campbell. Present. Councilwoman Fairby. Present. Councilwoman Harper, present. Councilwoman Muggler, present. America A. Present. And the invocation this evening will be given by Councilwoman Carolyn Campbell, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. So would you please stand and join us for this? As we recognize National Crime Victims Rights Week and Youth Violence Prevention Week, please hold those in harm's way in your loving grace and grant them peace and comfort through difficult times. Gather us all as one, even if we have various thoughts on how to support those around us, as we all have compassion for those who need our help. Please instruct us and teach us the way. Counsel us with your loving eye, and let our plans be orchestrated by you. In Hebrews 12, you teach us for the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Whatever it is that you want, Lord, guide us to that light. Amen. And with a large group of people that kind of refused to leave. So I want to applaud our police department for their work and being able to resolve both of those situations without as far as we know anybody, any officers or anybody in the public getting uh injured or harmed in any way. So I'm grateful for their response and for their patience and being able to work through both of those situations. And so subsequently, there were several uh you know social media posts about the event, and people we were telling people that you know you have to have a permit to come to the beach, and so they wanted to know well, why would teenagers or kids have to have a permit to come to the beach? Well, you don't. You don't need a permit to come to the beach. Kids are free to come and enjoy the beach uh any time that the beach is open. But the problem is is when a single social media organizer messages the public to come to the beach and do a takeover, that is a large public gathering in a public place. And under our current policy, that requires a permit. Uh when you when you have an open event and you're inviting, opening it up, and anybody can come, we uh we require a permit for that. And so the organizers of that event didn't get the permit, and what we got was this invitation for a large group of people to come to the beach. So I bring that up because one to compliment our police department for being able to handle it, but two is just to you know reinforce uh to the public that you know we we invite everybody to come and enjoy our public communities like the beach, Buckrow Beach and our parks and all, but you know, these huge takeovers or huge unannounced gatherings where large groups of people show up are not permissible and they're not permissible because what's happening is they come with the intention of uh fighting and fights broke out, and uh you know, we we don't need that in our city. And so we're trying to discourage those, and if you know people who are planning to do those kinds of events, uh please discourage them to do to not do it, or if they want to try to do a large gathering or invite a large group of people to come to the beach, go to our parks and rec department and apply for a permit, and um and the police department will evaluate that and then attempt to provide the uh appropriate level of security if they can't accommodate the event. But these um unannounced just uh unorganized groups of people is not healthy, especially for those who are at the beach with their kids and trying to enjoy the beach safely, to have that coming on is not is not appropriate and not acceptable. So, you know, do uh encourage people not to do it if you know it. If your young people or kids in your household uh see information which uh people are inviting them, please ask them not to go because in more than most likely that is an unpermitted event and not allowed, and police are going to try to break that up. So once again, I want to thank our law enforcement officers for their quick response and and being able to handle those incidents. And uh we we expect uh you know that there could be others, so we'll continue to monitor those and make sure that uh during the summer we try to allow people to come to our beach and enjoy it without any kind of interruption, any kind of fights or other violent activity. So with that, I'm gonna ask the clerk to read the protocol for the consent agenda. The consent agenda consists of routine, non-controversial items requiring council approval. These items are typically adopted with one motion and without discussion tonight. Your consent agenda amends the FY26 council approved budget to appropriate approximately 1.8 million from the equipment replacement funds unrestricted net position to the equipment replacement funds operating budget for Hampton Police Division Vehicles, it appropriates $7,000 from the wetlands encroachment restricted fund balance to the community development operating account to fund the city's participation and the Virginia Conservation Assistance Program. It approves Hampton's participation and proposed settlements of opioid-related claims and to execute the document necessary to effectuate the participation, and it approves the minutes from four city council meetings. All right, we need a motion and a second. So move. Second. Call the role, please.