Councilwoman Campbell, present, Councilwoman Farabee, present, Councilwoman Harper, present, Councilwoman Muggler, present, Mayor Gray.

Present.

And we have uh several presentations uh on the agenda this afternoon.

The first is uh city council uh budget presentation or update.

So I'll turn that over to City Manager to introduce that.

Okay.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor and Council members.

As you know, we're entering into the actual work sessions after we've released a manager's recommended budget, and by tradition, we have with us the school board and superintendent and his team to present their school board budget.

I'm sure they'll tell you a little bit more about this as they do it, but um lest us all remember we don't have a state budget right now.

So I expect, I think they probably expect this will change a bit once they get a final state budget based upon what the House and Senate introduced.

But today they're going to present what they responsibly had to look at, which was the introduced budget.

So real quickly before they present that, I want to acknowledge the I think we have the everyone is that right.

I got to count from this almost everyone.

We don't have Mr.

Kilgore, but six of the seven school board members with us.

Chair Richard Mason is going to kick off the presentation.

Want to acknowledge Vice Chair Stephanie Jackson Afanja, uh Dr.

Tina Banks Gray and Stevens Cherry, uh Reverend Woodhouse, um, as the other school members, school board members in attendance, and of course, Dr.

Haynes, Dr.

Congiano, and Brittany.

Um, we have a Britney Abbott.

So I had to think Brittany Branch, um, their chief financial officer will be part of the presentation.

But Dr.

Mason is going to kick it off.

All right, Dr.

Mason, welcome.

Good afternoon, Mayor Gray, Vice Mayor Brown, and members of City Council, and my Mary, my city manager.

We appreciate the opportunity to be with you all today to present our our budget.

Um, the Virginia School Board Association, or we as we refer to it as VSBA, they outline the three core responsibilities of our school board, and that is hiring and evaluating the superintendent, establishing policy, and adopting and overseeing the budget, and we approach each of these duties with great care and accountability.

Now, the budget that's going to be before you today certainly reflects deliberate planning on a strong commitment of fiscal responsibility.

It is designed to support our students while honoring the trust placed in us as stewards of public funds.

Uh, but I also want to acknowledge uh Mr.

Jason Samuels and Mr.

Joe Kilgore.

They're not able to be here with us today because of some previous work commitments that they had to um attend to, but they were certainly a part of the planning and and the work that has gone into this.

My official apologies for miscounting.

There were only five, and I did leave off Jason Samuels.

Thank you for catching my mistake.

It's all right.

If you want to miscount and add about two more million dollars into that budget, we'll we'll take that missing.

It's not that expensive of a mistake.

Well, Hampton City School certainly remains grounded in in its mission to partner with our community to ensure academic success for every child every day, whatever it takes.

In alignment with this mission, the school board provided clear direction to the superintendent to guide the development of this budget.

We also sought meaningful input from our community.

The top areas identified from the community were competitive employee compensation, strengthening school safety, and expanding tutoring and academic support.

This budget certainly reflects our strategic priorities and the voices of our community, in which it is balanced, focused, and aligned with shared goals.

And so before turning things over to the superintendent and his team, I want to take a moment on behalf of the school board to thank the city council for your continued collaboration and partnership.

And you certainly know I brag on this relationship and what we do here in the city of Hampton because we certainly don't take it for granted when I hear some of the challenges that our other school boards face in their communities.

We are truly blessed to have this working relationship.

So your support truly has made a measurable impact.

With Hampton City Schools, we continue to show strong results with every school fully accredited for the 2024-2025 school year with the highest designation possible.

We also celebrate the class of 2025, which achieved an on-time graduation rate of 98.88%, the highest that this division has ever seen in history, along with our lowest dropout rate of 0.02%.

Thank you for your ongoing commitment to our students, staff, and the broader Hampton community.

And at this time, I'm going to introduce our superintendent, Dr.

Raymond Haynes.

Good afternoon, Mayor Gray, Vice Mayor Brown, members of the Council and City Manager Bunting.

It's a pleasure to be with you today to present Hampton City School's fiscal 2027 budget.

Before we begin, I would like to acknowledge Assistant City Manager Brian DeProfio and express our appreciation for the time guidance and collaboration he provides throughout the development of this budget.

I also want to recognize the entire school board for their leadership and active engagement during the process.

The board's priorities, along with the valuable input we received from the community, has been central in shaping our recommendations.

As you know, we are still waiting for final action on the state budget in Richmond.

And in the interim, we are prepared to share key elements of our budget this afternoon, many of which were introduced during the two by two budget discussions held earlier this year.

You will see that this proposal maintains a strong focus on recruiting and retaining high quality staff through competitive compensation and benefits.

We also remain committed to ensuring safe supportive learning environments and advancing student achievement, even as we plan for the expiration of certain grant-funded positions and resources.

I would also like to extend our sincere thanks to City Manager Bunting and the City Council for your continued partnership and support.

That partnership is evident in the progress we've made together from the completion of capital improvement projects highlighted during the January facilities tour and presentation to City Council to the sustained investment and teacher compensation over the past seven years.

For example, where Hampton once trailed surrounding school divisions and teacher pay, we have now become competitive and in many cases a leader across multiple teacher experience levels for the 25-26 school year.

At this time, I would like to invent invite, I'm sorry, Mrs.

Brittany Branch, our chief financial officer to come forward and walk us through the details of fiscal year 2027 school budget.

Following the presentations, we will entertain any questions you may have.

Thank you, Dr.

Haynes.

Good afternoon, Mayor Gray, Vice Mayor Brown, members of City Council, City Manager Monting.

It's my pleasure to be here today to provide the details of the Hampton City School's fiscal year 2027 budget.

This budget really embodies our commitment to our teachers, our staff, and our students, which ultimately impacts our community.

So during this presentation, you will hear that it's recommended and approved by our school board to provide a 3% compensation increase to employees, and that's with no increase to employee health care premiums.

This budget also includes targeted compensation adjustments to our teacher salary scale.

Additionally, we strategically repurpose savings from changes in retirement costs, and we prioritize sustaining positions and resources that are currently grant-funded based on those grants scheduled to end at the end of June this school year.

So when developing the school board's budget, this is a process that's done over 10 months.

And it really starts back in August with planning.

During this time, we actually put together and draft a budget development manual.

And this development manual is what we provide to our departments and schools to tell them how they are to submit requests and to remind them to make sure those requests align with our strategic plan.

We also take time to look at our actual results from last school year and see what impact that would have, not only in what we budget for, but how we budget.

In October, we kick off our data collection phase.

That's when departments are actually submitting requests.

We look at enrollments for projection, and we start looking at initial revenue estimates, with the largest being the release of the governor's budget, which typically happens in December.

In January, we do our budget committee meetings.

Our assistant city manager Brian DeProfiel serves on that committee with us.

And we look at our revenue projections in each one of the budget requests.

And for the presentation today, that really moves us into the approvals phase, with the final phase being close out by the end of June.

So one of the most important parts of development processes to hear from our school board.

And the school board identified the following priorities for next school year.

The academies of Hampton, student achievement, compensation, recruitment, retention, school safety, and mental wellness.

And as Dr.

Mason shared, our community again was able to provide us feedback, and their top three priorities were competitive compensation, safety, and tutoring and remediation.

So following our budget development process and making sure we align the budget with the school board's priorities and the community's feedback.

This was the basis for Hampton City schools' total estimated budget of $372 million for next school year.

Let's take a look at the projected revenue by each fund.

Starting with fund 50, the school operating fund, we are projected to have revenues of 328 million dollars.

This is an increase of 15 million from the current year.

This additional revenue is driven by one Governor Young's budget because that is currently the budget we have the most detailed information from the Virginia Department of Education on at this point.

Also includes an estimate for the local contribution, and we also made some adjustments to our other revenue sources just based on actual results from fiscal year 2025.

Looking at food and nutrition services fund 51, we are projecting a budget of about 17.4 million dollars.

This is pretty stable with what we projected for this school year, with a slight increase for donated food items, the revenue for from the USDA.

Our fund 60 reimbursement projects, this is typically our grant fund.

We are projected to have revenues of 25 million, and you will see that we are projecting a decrease in revenue, but that is directly related to the scheduled end of our all-in state grant and also one of our school security officer grants.

Additionally, within fund 60, we have recommended and the school board approved for us to move a large portion of our operating expenses for the television station or CPEG as we refer to it to the school operating fund.

And that portion does not have a budgetary impact.

As we look at fund 65 rental income, projected revenue was 152,000, almost 153,000 next school year, and that budget is always based on our current rental agreements.

Fund 93 school activity funds, this mirrors the activity that happens within an individual schools, for example, fundraising activities from student clubs, and we're projecting 1.1 million.

For fund 95, our last fund, this is our business enterprise, the Hampton City Schools Instructional Resource Toolkit.

We are projecting revenue of $660,000 next school year.

The investment from the city council, or as we refer to with the local contribution or local revenue, it is accounted for within school school operating fund or fund 50.

So the remainder of this presentation will really focus on fund 50.

So again, we are projecting $328 million, and again, this is an increase of $15 million for next school year.

So starting with our largest revenue source for the school operating fund, our state revenues are projected to be $218.3 million.

This is an increase of about $12.5 million.

As you all know, the state develops this budget on a two-year basis, so fiscal year 2027 is the first year of the new state bienni.

There are two main drivers for school divisions as it relates to state revenue.

One being the local composite index or LCI, and the other being the March 31st average daily membership.

Our local composite index, this is a calculation that the state utilizes.

This determines how much is city or county is required to fund the education costs under the standards of quality.

And the standards of quality are just the minimum education requirements that all school divisions have to follow within Virginia.

Our LCI for next school year is calculated to be 25.25%.

When we look at our average daily membership projection, this is the number of students not only enrolled in school but also attending school from the start of the school day through the last day in the month of March.

We are projecting our average daily membership to be 18,432.

That is an increase of 79 students compared to where we are currently budgeted for this school year.

As we move to the local support, our second largest funding source, again, this is based on the funding formula that is shared with the school division, 61.83% of Pacific revenue taxes.

Through our collaboration with the city finance department, we are showing today a estimated contribution of $102 million.

But we do use the term estimated because we know that that is still subject to city council approval.

For our federal funds, this would not include any grant related awards, but our federal funds are projected to be over $700,000 for our school operating fund.

And we receive those funds from two programs the Federal Impact Aid and also the Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps.

We also have other revenue, and that represents about $7.1 million of the projected revenue for next school year.

Our largest revenue source being the funds generated by our employee pharmacy, which is expected to be $3.2 million next school year.

All of the revenue that we receive within the school division, we are required by law to then categorize those dollars by expenditure classifications.

And as you can see on the slide, instruction represents our largest expenditure classification, and that's about 67% of the budget.

We're further required to then take those dollars and then determine what expenditure objects those dollars relate to.

And salaries and French benefits represents about 79% of our budget.

Because our core business is teaching and learning, we do have a strong focus on not only attaining exceptional staff but also retaining.

So competitive compensation, as you heard, was a priority of our school board, but also it did come up in the results from our community.

So based on that, the school board did approve us to have a 3% compensation raise effective July 1, and that has a total cost of about $6.4 million to the school operating fund.

In addition to the 3% raise, we also looked at direct support using the local contribution to budget and invest 1.9 million dollars directly into our teacher's salary scale.

With this investment, that also includes our starting teacher pay, so a new teacher into the school division, would have a salary if approved of $58,050.

And as Dr.

Haynes stated, you know, we have become more competitive in some areas, so we are continuing to make sure that we are a leader among the peninsula.

And much of that focus has been our bachelor's salary scale, but with this investment, we have started the process.

We call it the next step of continuing our competitive compensation for teachers.

Is looking at teachers who are on the master's degree and above teacher salary scales.

And just a point of reference, we have over 50% of our current teaching staff that have a master's degree or higher.

So looking at other compensation and fringe benefit highlights, we did also have approved in this budget of our school board reclassifications and compensation adjustments for select positions.

And this again is in addition to 3% raise.

And this figure also includes adding a new supplement that will provide new teachers to the school division with pay for intending the new teacher orientation in the month of August.

Additionally, when we looked at our health care costs, we are expected to see an increase of about 7.5% for next school year, and that translated into an additional investment of 1.3 million dollars for our school operating fund.

And we also are projecting an increase to our contribution to the HERS program.

Taking a look at changes in staffing, school board approved an overall addition of 43 positions.

However, it's important to note that of that 43, only three are actually new positions or would be new positions to the school division.

One being the school security officer for the Beth Ohio Science Wing, and also two new dual language emergent teachers.

The remaining 40 positions are currently funded within Fund 60 and are accounted for using grant funds or other fund 60 programs.

But due to mostly those two grants that I mentioned are the ending, we had to make decisions on what essential positions and resources we felt needed to be incorporated into our fund 50 operating budget.

We also were able to repurpose dollars, about five million dollars with 4.2 million coming from changes in the Virginia retirement system contribution requirements, and then also we had a little over 800,000 of attrition dollars due to salary and benefit changes.

Some other some other highlights of the school operating fund.

Our pharmacy and wellness center, it costs us about 4.1 million dollars to run that on an annual basis.

We have about 1.5 million dollars.

This is just non-payroll dollars that directly support our academies of Hampton.

We also have English and Language Arts Instructional Resources that are added into this budget, and these were previously funded within our fund 60 grant as well, but those directly support our students.

We're looking to also continue to invest 300,000 for welding and electrical certification program for our students, continue our partnership with the community service board.

We also have approved then this budget by the school board to commit an additional 150,000 dollars to support students with disabilities through our partnership with the Department of Agent and Rehabilitation Services.

This budget continues to include debt service payments for our pre-K8 schools and the kick of hand high science wing.

And then our last item on this slate and um excuse me this slide that's important to notate.

We do have about $3.1 million set aside for one-time costs related to facility upgrades, mainly and within our elementary schools, but we do also have within this figure amounts to help address a partnered um uh facility upgrade for our school administration building with the city as well.

So as I come to the end of the presentation, just some next steps.

Um, we will continue to monitor um the final action of the state budget, so we know that there will be changes, so we'll make sure to assess those impacts and submit revised numbers to not only the school board to but to city council as well.

And just for the viewing audience, um, there is a link within this presentation that takes you directly to the Hampton City Schools budget information page.

So this is where the community can stay abreast on any changes with the school systems budget.

So that completes the presentation of the fiscal year 2027 approved budget.

And again, I just want to echo what Dr.

Mason and Dr.

Haynes have already shared.

Um, I do appreciate the collaboration and the partnership that we do have.

So I'll be happy to answer any questions at this time.

Questions uh Vice Mayor Brown.

Thank you, Ms.

Branch, for your um exquisite um budget presentation.

Just two questions.

Um what is the uh um what do we rank in terms of starting salary for teachers in the region?

When we excuse me, uh when we were um looking at how to um utilize that additional investment of 1.9 million, um, we looked at the 50 uh 54 or 8 um putting us at the top on the peninsula.

Thank you.

Put them up at the top at the top.

And I I will have a caveat that oftentimes um we're very competitive, so sometimes you know, once someone releases their starting salary, some other school digits may even put a dollar on there.

So sometimes there's some back and forth that happens, but when we looked at this, it would have put us on top of the peninsula.

Okay.

And the um other question, and I I really appreciate this.

Welding in and electrical programs, is it integrated into the curriculum or that integrated into the academies?

Um, it's a partnership that we have with um the Virginia Peninsula, yes, um, community college.

And um, we actually have that program currently, but that is incorporated into our curriculum as far as us making sure that you know we have students who are able to with the workforce development program.

Okay, good.

Yeah, so those those youngsters will get certs and uh electrical or um welding.

Welding.

Yes.

Good, thanks.

Appreciate it.

Councilmember Muggler.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Um, thank you very much for the presentation.

I want to call you Miss Dorch because that's it's my middle name.

So okay, good.

Um it's good to see you, yes.

Branch.

Um, couple of quick questions.

One was um the CPEG for moving that over.

Um, so when you do that, is that gonna eliminate that whole fund 60?

No, it won't eliminate um the entire fund 60.

Um, what it will do is just move mainly like the salaries and benefits and non-capital type purchases to our fund 50 operating budget, but we will still keep the longer term or larger expenses um that we utilize using the Verizon and Cox fees.

We'll still utilize those in 60.

Yes.

Okay, makes great sense.

Um just curious.

I was great to uh see the um success of the pharmacy.

Yeah, um, and you know, nice to see that being a nice healthy number in in your revenue there.

Um I just had one other little question, and that was with respect to if I can find oh hers.

Um I noticed that that went up in your annual um fee to them, but I was just curious how that happens when the fund is sloughing off.

Yes, so uh when our actuaries looked at the fact that we have a lot of employees that are living longer, what that meant was they needed to take a look at changing the mortality tables that they utilize in the actual calculation.

So, based on employees living longer, that change with the mortality tables that meant that we should be contributing a little more on an annual basis.

Okay, interesting.

Okay, thank you very much.

So it looks like a great budget, and I'm sure it will produce great success for the school division.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilwoman Harper.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

I have um one question.

I know some of the federal funding that you all get.

Um has there been any discussion whether or not it's it's um gonna stay that way?

Will there be any changes?

Or are you um ready to if they are any changes to kind of compensate so that you know you all are not missing or you know, not doing anything because the federal money has changed?

Um we haven't been made aware of any um decreases in our federal funding.

Um we're not expecting any decreases.

But one of the um one of the major parts of our development process is to really look at the sustainability of our grants.

So we look at that grant by grant, and there all were some decisions that um had to be made based on where we saw grant funds me maybe being flat and not seeing increases.

So we did propose, and the school board did approve us specifically with our special education grant to move some essential positions from that grant to fund 50 to make sure that we continue to provide those supports for our students.

Thank you so much.

Any other questions?

Okay, that's it.

Ums branch, thank you.

Thank you.

I think we'll be seeing many of the school team tonight for the cuts and conversations presentation as well, Mr.

Mayor.

Yes, indeed.

Looking forward to it.

Um really this isn't a presentation as much as it is an opportunity for staff to receive any comments, questions, and at this point, if you have any suggestions, I realize it's before the first budget hearing, so you may not, but we always set aside a little bit of time for you all to give us your first reactions to the manager's recommended budget, which was presented two weeks ago for the public, and of course, the actual budget document itself was released online and in libraries on April 15th, as well as to each of you.

So if you do have some preliminary feedback or questions, we have our team here to answer those for you, and um, of course, we'll all see what happens at the budget hearing tonight.

Councilwoman Harper, you got your light on.

Did you have a question?

Yeah, um, I I just wanted to thank City Manager Bunting, um, Deputy City Manager Brian, the DePorfio, and the staff.

That that budget book is very nicely done.

It was easy to read, and even with me going back several years.

Um, I'm I'm old school, I still like to read books.

I don't like electronic.

So, but um, you know, you could easily turn the pages and and um you know everything.

So I I just want to say thank you so much for the prep preparation that went into preparing that that book.

It was very nicely done.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments uh regarding the uh Y27 budget?

I guess that just uh good thing speaks volumes of the great work that you and the staff have done.

Thank you on behalf of the staff.

I'm glad Councilwoman Harper took a moment to say that, not so much for me, but for the team.

I mean, they really put in a lot of hours, including some very late nights.

Um they they view that budget book as a labor of love as well as their job, um, and they wanted to put the community in that best possible light, as you all know.

But for the benefit of the community, we have uh won um excellence in budget reporting awards year after year after year, and we like to continue that tradition.

But the public acknowledgement for all the hard work they've done is much appreciated.

Thank you for taking the time for that.

And we'll remain available, of course, to questions, concerns, possible amendments.

Again, a lot of times that's really more informed from the budget hearing, but we wanted to give you a chance this afternoon.

Okay, all right.

Well, thanks to the budget team and the finance department team, you're all out there.

So uh great work on uh another fantastic budget.

Didn't have any questions yet, so we'll see what the public brings this this week and next week, and uh we're looking forward to uh moving to uh final approval.

So all right.

So uh City Imagine one uh the next presentation.

Certainly.

The last item we have today is a briefing on our resilient Hampton work for Fox Hill, Grandview, and Harris Creek to develop their water plans.

You may recall we've done water plans for other parts of the city, and our commitment was getting around to doing them in all the areas.

So this go around it was Fox Hill, Grandview, and Harris Creek.

Um, and this water level watershed level process helps us to identify coastal resilience and adaptation opportunities.

And today we're just overviewing the planning process, preliminary community feedback, and the next steps, including work we'll be having with the community in the coming days and week.

Um today we're going to have our chief resilience officer, Olivia Eskew make the presentation, but I see she's brought many members of her team as well.

Um, yes, I have behind me two members of the resilience division, Anna Hammond, and then a new team member, uh Grace Can, who you all may not have met before.

Um, thank you, uh members of Council City Manager for having us today.

Um, this is what I proposed to present to you all.

It's been you know a while since we've gone up here and you know done an overview of what the resilient Hampton Initiative is, what is a water plan.

The last time we adopted one was in 2023, and we have several new members of council.

Um, and then diving uh a little deep into the the nature and risks of Fox Hill, uh Grandview, and Harris Creek, the the three sub study areas, and then the community engagement, what we've heard from the community, and where we are going with this planning process.

So for the resilient Hampton Initiative, as you may know, um the resilience division is charged with coordinating the city's response to living with water, one of City Council's strategic priorities.

And we look at water from two different facets.

One, the challenge that water is for us in terms of flooding and coastal storms, but then the other side of that coin that water is a very um important asset to our community.

I can't think of Hampton or the peninsula without thinking about the water being out on a boat, being out at the beach.

So we look at water from both of those perspectives that it's a challenge that needs to be addressed, but then how can we use water as a great asset and build upon that?

So, what does that look like in terms of implementation?

So, for addressing the challenge, we're looking at various different types of infrastructure.

So, um, infrastructure can be more gray, hardened uh infrastructure like uh a seawall or raising a road to things that are are more green and work with nature, such as um tree and habitat conservation, shoreline restoration, green infrastructure such as a rain garden.

Then on the side of treating water as an asset, we look at considering coastal placemaking, the how the water economy, access to the waterway, allowing our citizens to be able to access the water, and then how do they access the water?

Are they using bikes, transit, cars?

These are all different considerations that we um have in our projects.

So we have a definition of resilience, and um it's it's different from other cities.

Every city defines resilience in a certain way.

For Hampton, our definition of resilience is asset-based.

So we're looking at bolstering our inherent strengths so that when we have these chronic stresses, which you can see on the image to the right, um, the different impacts of water.

So when we have those stresses and extreme events and shocks, such as storms, nor'easters, hurricanes, we're able to bounce back even stronger than before.

So using our inherent strengths, using those assets so that when we have a chronic event, we're even stronger after uh that event.

So, what is our mission?

Our mission is to envision, create, and empower Hampton to live and thrive with water and the impacts of climate change through approaches driven by data and values.

So what are some of those impacts of climate change that we are experiencing?

First and most noteworthy is higher sea levels.

So the thresholds that you see on the left of one and a half feet of sea level rise by 2050, three feet by 2080, and four and a half feet by 2100 are regionally adopted standards, planning horizons that we use when designing projects.

So these were adopted and endorsed by the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission and a majority of municipalities that are doing resilience work across the planning district use these thresholds.

So seal will rise and also add the increasingly more powerful and infrequent storms that we're getting, so rain, precipitation events, put those two things together, and what are the impacts on our city on our citizens?

So we are having hotter years, so extreme heat days in the summer coming up, some hot days that we've had recently, urban heat island effects, so pockets of areas within the city where there's lots of impervious surface, reflects the heat and is really hot.

Then the impacts of water.

So we experience flooding throughout the city when there's not a cloud in the sky.

So we call it sunny day flooding, primarily driven by winds or higher tides.

Then our infrastructure, our stormwater infrastructure, sometimes when there's higher tide events, the tides flow through our infrastructure into our city instead of taking the water out of our city.

We have standing water because of poorly infiltrating urban soils, inland flooding along Newmarket Creek and some of our other creek systems, and then the coastal storm impacts, such as storm surge, flooding, wave action, and erosion along our shoreline, and then wind wind damage from those storms.

So the resilient Hampton team buckets our work into three main buckets planning and policy, projects and programs, and people and partners.

For planning and policy, we work primarily with our community development department on aligning how the city is planning to grow in the future and considering what does that mean in terms of our climate risks.

And then implementing policies throughout our development process that are aligned with these impacts.

Projects and programs, like as I mentioned, where we design with the community and construct different infrastructure projects throughout the city to reduce flooding and adapt to flooding.

And then we offer several programs to our citizens.

And then people and partners, we have a great network of community organizations, institutions, universities of higher education that we work with to implement resilience across the city.

So back in 2017, when the resilient hand initiative was started, the city working with the community identified principles and values to guide the work.

So we set out and decided how we were going to do the work before we actually started doing the work.

And those principles are to create values-driven solutions, reinforce our assets as you've heard me talk about, layer public benefits, so projects aren't only looking to address flooding, but also to have other benefits for the neighborhood, strengthen these very important partnerships that we have, use the best available data as data is always changing, and then share knowledge and resources with our partners across the region and across the nation and in some cases across the world.

So on the right are examples, some of our partners that we work with.

And you can see that we work at multiple different scales within the city, from citywide large policy at the top, working within neighborhoods like the water plan, or then down to the parcel level implementation projects as well.

The values that we have identified for the resilient Hampton Initiative are to be safe to reduce risk, equitable, so creating benefits for all, natural, repairing and protecting our natural systems, nimble, being able to adapt to change, heritage, appreciating and supporting our local history integrated, making sure that we're connecting systems so that we have multiple benefits, sufficient leveraging public and private funding, and innovative, creating forward-thinking solutions and really pushing what resilience can be for a city.

Also core to the work that we do is community building.

We work hand in hand with community members and organizations to empower them to take resilient action on their own.

Resilience isn't just something that the city has an organization can achieve.

So for some of the planning processes that we go through.

We have citywide plans, and then we also have watershed level plans.

So for citywide plans, I mentioned in 2017 where we established our values and principles.

That's in the Living with Water Hampton Plan.

And then from the Living with Water Hampton Plan, and I identified that we needed to do these watershed or neighborhood level plans.

So we currently have two of those.

One is for New Market Creek, and the other is for downtown Phoebus and Buckrow.

And then this next one that we're working on, Fox Hill, Grandview and Harris Creek.

Layer on top of that, we have some other citywide projects that we're working on or have accomplished.

So we have a natural infrastructure plan that's citywide, and then our peninsula coastal storm risk management feasibility study that we are doing with the Army Corps and our other non-federal sponsor of the city of Bacoson.

So the point of all these plans is not just to do make plans and have them be on the shelf, but it's to implement projects.

Here's an example of some of the projects that we have, either in design, completely designed, waiting for funding or being implemented, such as Big Bethel Blue Way or have been implemented, such as Lake Hampton.

So that's an introduction overview of resilient Hampton.

I'm going to get into the water planning process and then the water plan that we're working on now.

So as I mentioned, the Living with Water Plan identified that we needed to do these watershed level plans throughout the city.

We made a commitment that we're going to go to every neighborhood and work with community members, work with stakeholders to identify what is resilience look like for you in the future.

This map on the right was in that 2017 plan that broke the city into these six different planning areas.

And we've largely kept to these outlines.

So we've completed New Market Creek, portions of the South West Branchback River area, Hampton River, and then Bay facing, and then we're moving into this low-lying area up the northeastern part of the city.

And why do we do this?

So Hampton's neighborhoods are unique and they require specific analysis based on local conditions.

So we're considering things such as elevation and hydrology, how the water moves through the landscape, the age of infrastructure, the age of streets, sidewalks, the stormwater infrastructure varies across the city.

Soils, how the city was developed, when it was developed, and then the culture.

So what is a water plan?

So in its essence, the water plan is a watershed slash neighborhood.

The lines can get fuzzy.

Level resilient coastal resilience plan to live and thrive with water.

So the graphic on the right shows that it's this cyclical process that we go through.

We plan with the community, we design the projects and programs that are identified in the plan, and we implement them, and then we monitor those projects and programs to make sure that they're achieving our goals and our values and if they're working.

And if not, change.

And then we continue to plan and design, implement and monitor, and all the while we're engaging with the community through that process.

So what's the purpose of the water plan?

It does these three things.

One, it analyzes the landscape and challenges, both physical and social.

So looking at some of those factors that I mentioned previously, it establishes a vision for the future of the watershed.

It's important for us that this vision is shared with the community, shared with the neighborhood, and then it identifies projects to implement and achieve that vision.

We do this by using our resilience design strategies of slowing and storing water, defending and adapting and buffering from coastal storms.

So what does this look like?

So for slowing, it's how can we slow water in the upland part of the landscape so that when it rains, it doesn't just rush down and flood lowland and coastal areas.

So some of the methods that we use are our bioswale.

So that's an image of Mary Jackson neighborhood center that has several bioswales on the property, primeable pavement, rain gardens.

Storing is it's similar to slow.

How can we store water in the uplands of the same intent so that it can slowly trickle downstream and not overwhelm downstream populations?

Some ways of doing that are our cisterns connected to buildings, stormwater parks, that's an image of Lake Hampton that was recently completed, and then underground storage solutions.

Redirecting water through canals and channels.

This is basically how can you take your underground stormwater system, open it up a little bit and use it as an asset.

Adapting along the shoreline in areas that are frequently flooded.

This is one in Fox Hill.

Floating buildings are an interesting solution that they use in other places in the world, and then elevating roads out of areas of hazard.

Buffering the coastal areas.

This can be done through beach and dune nourishment, such as the beach nourishment that we do along Buckrow.

Living shorelines, this is an example at Bluebird Gap Farm, and then offshore oyster reefs to slow down wave action.

In the protecting, this is generally the more hardened type of infrastructure.

So seawalls, floodballs, that's an image of Fort Monroe.

We also have our seawall at Buckrow.

And then berms and levees, it's basically another type of seawall, but a little bit more gentle instead of just a very uh tall structure.

And then on the on the other side of the seawalls and berms and levees, what's the infrastructure needed to get the water out behind it?

So drainage pumps, tide gates, and tide valves as well.

So those are all of the various different strategies that we look at implementing.

So Fox Hill Grandview and Harris Creek.

First off, I have to mention that this plan leverages several different funding sources.

One is a community flood preparedness fund grant from the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation.

And then portions of the pro of the project are funded through National Fish and Wildlife Foundations, National Coastal Resilience Fund, and the Department of War.

So this is a study area.

This is why we say that they're watershed slash neighborhood level plans, because the orange outline may not follow what you consider this neighborhood.

But we've broken it out into these three sub-areas so that we can do a little bit more detailed analysis.

So again, the northeastern part of the city and includes Harris Creek Road and the neighborhoods around there, Fox Hill Road, the Fort Worth development, Beach Road, Hall Road, and then the Grandview Island proper on the side.

So I'm sure you all have been to these locations, but for anybody in the audience or watching online, I want to kind of show the character of these neighborhoods.

Grandview Island, as its name states, is a barrier island for the city.

It also has the Grandview Nature Preserve, which is a natural area that's you know a city park, has a wide and very vast wetland, tied a wetland system, and then there's also a system of dunes along the beach itself.

Fox Hill, so Fox Hill's primary interior exterior route is Beach Row, which which floods very often now.

Community members can say, you know, that place right there that it floods every year, and they all know what they're talking about.

So we have those areas more rural than a lot of Hampton.

Um, but then you have a small main street field shown in the picture in the bottom right of you know the historic part of Fox Hill.

But then along the fringes, you have uh the water economy.

So there's several different marinas, both public and private, and boat uh launches as well.

Harris Creek is different from the other two because there are more rural areas, especially as you get closer to the water, but then you have the post-war housing developments as well.

So you have like a lot of density near areas of um vulnerable vulnerable to flooding along Harris Creek.

So, as I said, and you all may be aware of this, but these areas experience several different flooding events.

They experience hurricanes and tropical storms.

These are some pictures from 2009, Hurricane Irene, in 2003, Hurricane Isabel.

But then they also have more nuance and uh nuisance and sunny day flooding, particularly they get flooded a lot by nor'easters just because of the way that the water uh bodies are uh angled uh such as Harris Creek, Grundlin, Wallace Creek.

So this is um of the the tidal flooding and sunny day flooding that occurred this past fall when we had a nor'easter in our king tide happen on the same weekend.

So um when we map this out, what is it was it what does it look like?

So this is a map of our present-day flood risk.

So you have the two colors in blue, the lighter blue and the darker blue.

The lighter blue is the 10-year flood event.

So this is um basically an area where there's a 10% chance of flooding occurring every year.

And then the area in dark blue, it says that there's a 50% chance of this area of flooding every year.

And you can see that the red dots that are scattered across the map are um information that we've received from the public of where it floods.

So you can see that it's widespread throughout the study area.

So this is 2040, taking those sea level rise threshold horizons that we discussed.

So you can see that the floodplain is moving inland, so there's a larger area that is projected to flood 50% chance every year.

And then when you go all the way out to 2060, again, moving further in, pretty much the whole study area is projected to be able to flood a 50% chance every year.

But then you also start seeing areas that are going to be part of the daily tidal cycle.

So mean high water that is the darkest blue color.

So you can see that we're projecting to experience a loss of land in some of these areas.

So what have we heard from the community?

So we began doing community interviews in August and October of this past fall, and then we held three community meetings at the Fox Hill Neighborhood Center in October and November.

So part of those interviews, we conducted 23 interviews with residents from all three of the study areas, Fox Hill, Grandview Island, and Harris Creek.

And that was the first part of our community engagement process because we wanted to ask the community how do you want to be engaged?

So that was important for us before we proceeded, and then those three open house meetings that we held in October, November, where we had about 160 attendees attend those open houses.

And this is a picture of kind of the feel of what those open house meetings look like.

So what do we specifically ask?

There's some things that we always ask.

One, where is it flooding?

What areas do you think you should be conserved?

So this is getting to that asset approach that we use.

And then we asked some different questions this time.

Why do you think it's flooding?

What's the education level across the community?

We asked how has flooding impacted your daily life?

Because that's already happening for these residents.

And then what types of resilient strategies may they be may the community be interested in having.

So again, we map all the information that we receive.

We take down the comments that we we hear.

This information is included in the presentation for you if you want to look into more detail.

But we took all the information that we received and developed themes and were able to bucket all of the comments.

And it came down to really these five themes.

One, flooded roads.

Roads are flooding and it makes travel difficult and sometimes dangerous.

Community members are concerned about restricted assets, so access.

So when roads flood and neighborhoods routinely become isolated, they're concerned that emergency services may not be able to access them if there's an emergency.

There is a perception in the community that a lack of maintenance on stormwater infrastructure and on ditches and pipes is contributing to flooding.

There is noted that shoreline erosion is occurring, particularly along Grandview, and that the erosion and higher tides are impacting community assets, including the beaches and wetlands.

And then there's also documented property damage that flood water can enter homes, garages, crawl spaces, causing damage to property and vehicles.

So where are we going?

So we're taking the vulnerability analysis that staff has done.

We're taking the community feedback and engagement results that we've done, and we are hosting next week a three-day design workshop and public gallery walks at the Fox Hill Neighborhood Center.

So the objective of these workshops is to bring together city staff, professional stakeholders, state agencies, local agencies together in a room to take the vulnerability vulnerability analysis, take the community feedback, and develop a suite of conceptual strategies to achieve resilience that you know incorporate that community feedback and that they meet the ultimate the goals of the water plan.

So it's broken up in three days.

The first one is we're working from the shoreline in.

So the first time the first day is looking at coastal nature-based solutions, moving inland, looking at hybrid infrastructure strategies, and then day three is okay.

How do we make it happen?

Are there policy hurdles that we need to address?

Is there state legislation that we might need to look at getting going to be able to do these things?

And at the evening of each of these days, there's a public gallery walk that the public is invited to from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.

to come and see what work has been done.

This is really an opportunity to be transparent with the public so that they can see where we're thinking.

But at the end of all these the design workshops, city staff will take a step back and come back out to the community in June with a public open house with a formal presentation of the work that was done for the design workshops.

So after that, um those design workshops and going back out to the public, we take the information, we refine the projects, and there'll be that'll be a long time span to do refinement, working amongst the public, uh the uh the planning team, working with our engineers to see what's actually feasible.

We'll be doing a preliminary benefit cost analysis.

We're gonna be looking at the economic cost of doing nothing, and all that will be presented back to the community and back to you all as um the formal water plan.

We'll be asking for the water plan to be adopted as a comprehensive plan amendment.

And then we'll take that plan and we'll use it to secure funding and implement solutions like we have a history of doing.

So thank you.

Um to anybody in the public, we have a newsletter.

You can use this QR code to sign up.

We use it to talk about projects, events, and just some education.

But thank you all for having me today and lending me your year.

Thank you, Olivia.

Questions?

Okay, Councilwoman uh Campbell.

Thank you.

Um great presentation.

Um, I do have a question about the waterways outside of the area that are probably state and federal, since they do send a lot of stuff, say and debris back inland.

Are you working with any dredging, uh specifically Wallace's marina up factory point in that area to try to get that stuff dredged?

I know some of the folks are running the ground, and that's probably sending it back upriver.

So, what's the plan there?

How's that work?

Yes, so our um public works stormwater team is the main folks who project manage our our dredging program, so that they are looking at um reoccurring dredging cycles of those water bodies.

Part of that that will that we will be looking at is um how can we use those dredge spoils as they're called for resilience?

There's something called thin layer placement that basically takes that the sediment and considers how can we with a very light touch put it on our wetlands that are sinking and drowning and to help them adapt to sea level rise.

So, in that way, we're gonna be looking at dredging, but in terms of like the programmatic aspects of our dredging program, that's mainly handled by our public works team.

Yes, ma'am.

Vice Mayor Brown.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you, Olivia.

Uh, just a quick question.

When you go into the neighborhoods and uh meet have community meetings and talk about flooding and you know these types of issues.

Uh, do we have any grants uh that would be available for neighborhood associations to apply for grants?

And if we do, do we provide as a staff any uh technical assistance to them in helping them to um write a grant or get a grant approved?

What type of grants would you be looking at?

Any grant that would help them mitigate flooding, um you know, water rise, sea level rising, whatever you know, issues they're having.

Yeah, there are a couple of programs that we offer under the resilience division.

We have the Virginia Conservation Assistance Program, which helps with funding for living shorelines, which may help if uh erosion is occurring.

Um we are working actively right now on getting our rain grant uh program up and running, which would be parcel level stormwater, so rain um practices to to reduce flooding from that.

Um our housing and neighborhoods office has the uh places and spaces, and it's called the neighborhood improvement grants.

Um that's a large uh pot of funding that organizations can look at to you know do projects on public land, and those can be resilience projects.

Um we're perfectly willing and happy to work with organizations to help develop those.

Um I think that that's probably the the three primary.

So our citizens we have some more if it's okay.

I just put an answer.

Uh uh so uh how do we uh how do citizens know what these uh opportunities are in terms of grants and how do we get the word out to them for assistance?

Yeah, we typically use our standard means of communication, such as our newsletter, our website, uh, the city's e-news.

We periodically push these programs out.

Um we've considered for our Virginia Conservation Assistance Program doing mailers to properties that are on the shoreline that are having a living shoreline is feasible.

Um whenever we do community presentations, because neighbor organizations will ask us to come out and give presentations.

Um we mentioned them.

Um but there's certainly opportunities.

If you have any recommendations of how we can reach our neighbors better, we would take those opportunities.

Since the vice mayor asked the question, in addition to what the ones Olivia mentioned, emergency management works with property owners that would qualify for home elevation opportunities through the FEMA mitigation grant program.

And as you likely know, but for the benefit of the citizens, we've raised quite a number of homes over the years through that program.

There are a mix of programs that come along.

Some of them are 100% covered by the federal government, some of them though do require homeowner match.

Usually when we're able to get the homeowner match is when they've had the storm impact because they're getting some insurance proceeds that help them to put towards that.

Um, but we are constantly looking for those kind of grant opportunities, and we saw Walker is a really great writer of those types of grants.

They do work together with the resiliency office to make sure that we understand the water plans that have been adopted for an area.

So if we're looking at a property, is it one that's better suited to elevation or a possible acquisition?

We have gotten some money in the past from Congressman Scott as an example, congressionally directed funding to actually outright purchase homes and then help relocate someone to an area because they're in a particularly vulnerable part of the city.

So, but those are bigger swings that come only usually in response to natural disasters.

Um they're not there all the time.

And I'm not being political when I say this, but a lot of that money has been rolled back under the current uh federal administration.

It's just not been as high of a priority for them as other things, and so I can't say when the next opportunity to get those monies will be, but I did want to note that we try to work with homeowners on elevation and or acquisition projects as appropriate.

Any other questions?

Thank you.

Uh thank you for the presentation.

I want to say I'm just you know really glad that we have a staff in place, a team dedicated to kind of looking at the data and then helping us begin to prepare for what's to come because when I look at um 2100, and you say that you show that uh sea level rise another four and a half feet by 2100, so that's 75 years from now, you know, my granddaughters will be senior citizens then.

But but I mean it underscores you know, really what we are facing here in Hampton because you also mentioned, you know, when when you look at the maps and how the uh storm water, the storm surge could occur between now and 2060, and that we we have you know the potential for loss of land, which I take that to mean that there are places where people live in Hampton today that will be uninhabitable, you know, 35 years from now.

So we won't be able to live in those areas because of the water.

And then you know, you talked about some of the different projects, some of the structural projects that we need to invest in to help protect us from what's to come.

And I wanted to ask a city manager to talk about you know, you know, one the cost of those structural projects and what we have been working on for so many years to try to put ourselves in a position to get federal funding for them and just to really talk to where we are with that today.

So I think the mayor sorry, I think the mayor is speaking about our efforts with Corps of Engineers to look at coastal uh resiliency through the CSRM or three by three by three study processes, it's more coalically referred to.

Um I think it was back in 2014 or 2015 we made our first request to get one of these studies.

These are studies that are basically gatekeepers, if you will, to getting access to federal funding to do structural implementation.

We talked about structural structural imitation, some of them are the things that you heard here.

Um for those of maybe paid more attention to some of the national stuff you hear about levies, for instance, in New Orleans or title gates and other places, these are the types of things that tend to protect whole cities or whole parts of cities.

They're very, very expensive, but the federal government does typically pay a rough roughly 65% of those costs if you go through the gatekeeping of the core uh CSRM or three by three by three study process.

So we started asking for that.

Well, actually, the way we sort of got there initially was we had asked for a study for New Market Creek area.

We thought under what was another program they have called the continuing appropriations continuing authorities appropriation process or CAP, and they told us they couldn't do any structural project under that.

So they started have looking at elevations and/or acquisitions as a way to try to help that neighborhood.

Um, but they told us that to get the structural things you're looking at, you're gonna have to go through this process.

So the reason I I take the time to explain that is we've been asking since 2014-2015 to be in that process.

And a couple years ago, we were finally told we're in that process, and you know, by the way, you're gonna be in a fully funded um study, so you don't even have to pick up the local match for doing the study itself.

Um, and only to find out after we had been in that process for a bit of time that the rules had changed or the the interpretation of the rules had changed, and we were limited to a max of three million dollars for the study process, which coincidentally they said was not enough to even study structural solutions, which was the whole reason why we had gotten that study process in the first place.

So they pushed us back to looking at um some of what they call non-structural solutions, which are the elevations, the home acquisitions, or other floodproofing mechanisms that you can do.

Um, and and that's where we are right now.

But we pushed back on the core and said, look, we started asking this long ago, over 10 years ago, to really be able to look at the structural.

You need to help us get this fixed.

And I'm really pleased to say that our congressman, Congressman Scott, and also Congressman Whitman, who has Pecosan, because Pecosan was also in the study, have been working to get the language fixed so the study can ultimately look at structural issues as well.

But they've also put in a part two study to hopefully get us if they can't get the language fixed, get us a new study.

Um, it seems like every time we make progress and where we think we are, the core rules change on us, and we have to try another strategy.

So we're not yet at the point where I can say they are studying the structural issues that will get us some of these bigger dollar solutions at the 65-35% ratio that is available once you complete that process, but we're gonna keep persisting in that that way.

A lot of the work that Olivia and her team and the contractual engineers and the community are doing together will serve as a blueprint for that work.

In fact, the Corps commended us on our work and said that they would actually, if we can get that structural study, use a lot of the work to it make it go faster, but they have to do the study for us to get that larger federal funding.

Uh Norfolk and Virginia Beach have both had their studies done or nearing done in the case of Virginia Beach.

And you know, we had actually asked, we were the we were kind of in before Virginia Beach, but we got bypassed by Virginia Beach because of the size of Virginia Beach.

So we're hoping that the federal government will see fit to either fix the language as Congressman Scott and Congressman Whitman have suggested, or to give us that second study so that we can ultimately get a CSRM that covers the structural as well as the non-structural okay.

Thank you for that.

I missed any of that up, Olivia.

Okay.

Okay, all right.

So there are no other questions.

Uh that's the final presentation.

Umless anybody had any questions for Olivia.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, so are there any regional issues?

Are there any items for new business?

All right, if there are none, I'm gonna ask the clerk to read the motion required for closed session.

The motion required is to complete a closed session pursuant to 2.2-3711A 7 and 8 for consultation with legal counsel to receive updates concerning pending litigation and other material legal issues and transactions pursuant to 2.2-3711A 3 and 8 to discuss potential acquisition of real property in the New Market Creek area, where discussion and open session would adversely affect the city's negotiating negotiating strategy and consultation with legal counsel concerning specific legal issues related to the same, and pursuant to 2.2-3711A1 for consideration appointments as listed on the agenda, as well as appointments to the economic development authority and citizens police advisory group and to discuss the performance of a council appointee.

All right, meet a motion and a second move approval, Mr.

Mayor.

Second.

All right.

Uh to call to roll, please.

Councilman Bowman.

Aye.

Vice Mayor Brown.

Aye.

Councilwoman Campbell.

Aye.

Councilwoman Faraby.

Aye.

Councilwoman Harper.

Aye.

Councilwoman Muggler.

Aye.

Mayor Gray.

Aye.

So we will convene in closed session at 225 in the Lawson Conference Room.

And following the closed session, Council will reconvene the open meeting in the same location in order to certify the closed session and then proceed to adjourn.

So with that, we all adjourn.