Good afternoon and welcome to the Hampton City Council work session.

Uh Madam Clerk, you call the role, please.

Councilwoman Bowman.

Present.

Vice Mayor Brown.

Here.

Councilwoman Campbell.

Present.

Councilwoman Fairby.

Present.

Councilwoman Harper.

Present.

Councilwoman Mugler.

Present.

Mayor Gray.

Present.

And we have two items on the agenda for this work session with presentations.

One is uh General Assembly legislative priority discussion and then one on a briefing from our towing advisory board recommendations.

So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Deputy City Manager Brian DeProfio who's filling in for the city manager who is out of town this week.

So Brian, you got it.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um as you had mentioned, uh, the first item on the agenda is the two 2027 General Assembly legislative priorities discussion.

Um each year around this time we present the city's draft General Assembly legislative priorities.

Um this part of the process gives council and the public an opportunity to review the draft before it is finalized and approved by council at a future council meeting.

Um the draft is based on the various issues that have been raised over the past year as well as items that have been priorities uh in the past and still are issues of concern for our community.

Uh our legislative uh liaison with two capitals consulting Mr.

Ed Reed is here today to present the draft, and I will turn it over to Ed to walk you through uh the draft as it currently uh currently stands.

Thank you, Ed.

All right, good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, Mayor, members of council, um city attorney Sidna or uh Deputy City Manager De Profio and then City Clerk Glass.

It's a pleasure to be before you again this afternoon.

It seems like I was just here maybe a couple months ago, giving you a recap of the previous session uh and the budget action that the General Assembly took as a result of the 2026 General Assembly session.

But um me and my colleague Maddie Bussey from two capitals consultant are uh happy to be here today to present the draft legislative agenda for the 2027 session.

Um I would also note that we are presenting this, I think two weeks earlier than we do historically, which I know some of you had heard from members of the delegation they wanted moved up a bit, but given the lateness of the budget, um this was pretty much as early as we could do.

But I think um it is certainly a move in the right direction.

As a part of today's discussion, we'll hope to give a little bit of a timeline, a glimpse into the timeline of the upcoming session, review potential legislative requests that have been outlined by um perhaps uh members of council, um department heads and members of the uh executive leadership team here.

Um review potential budget requests and review updated priority positions that most of you have seen before over over the history here of us creating the General Assembly legislative agenda.

Um as a result of today's presentation, I will be um seeking feedback that you might have as it relates to what you hear in the in the presentation.

So with that, just giving you a glimpse of the timeline.

Um we've spent much of August um talking with city leadership about uh potential items to go into the package, and uh I did want to give a thanks to the team in the city attorney's office and the city manager's office for helping to give um some background to items that you'll see in the in the draft package um this afternoon.

It is our hope that we'll take the feedback and then present a final version as you see there in the timeline um at your October 28th legislative meeting.

Um that will be for final adoption and approval um following which we will um take the fully adopted version and communicate officially to members of our our delegation.

Um the deadline for pre-filing is November 30th, and and I'll note that we typically are well ahead of that deadline in terms of getting bills drafted, and you'll hear a little bit about that today.

Um, but we typically have things in the hopper uh quite a bit before November 30th.

The governor will um present her budget amendments to the current two-year budget um on December 17th, after which point we'll be able to finalize um the city's budget amendments, and then you'll see there that the General Assembly session convenes on January 13th.

This is a short session, fingers crossed, um, and it's a 45-day session.

I will note we are currently in a special session as we as we speak, but um they they've recessed at the moment.

So now turning to uh we'll start with the proposed legislative bill requests, and this is one that we've talked about um last year.

Uh this is a request to uh amend the code of Virginia um to address the rising challenge with unpermitted events across the city.

Um I think this is particularly in the Buckwell area, um, but this would grant legislative authority for a locality to create a pop-up zone, is what we're calling it.

Um we've been talking to some other uh localities about potentially changing the name of pop-up zone to something else, um, but that's what it is at the current moment.

Um we're and I mentioned this a couple months ago when I briefed you, but we're working with a number of localities on this issue, including Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Newport News, Petersburg, and Richmond all have some varying um challenges with with similar events and unpermitted events in their jurisdictions.

And as I mentioned, we already have a commitment from Delegate Thornton to reintroduce the legislation, and then really proud of the work that you know the localities have been able to do over the summer.

Um, that Senator Ayrt, who is a the chair of the Senate local government committee has already submitted a draft of the legislation for next session, and we'll be fine-tuning that based on some of the feedback we hear from the localities.

I know that you know this did you know get some discussion uh last year, and I know that uh you know, besides other reasons that it might not have gone forward.

Uh I had also heard that there were concerns about this legislation affecting uh free speech zones within the communities.

Uh can you you share anything on that in terms of is is it is that the only reason uh that it may not be acceptable or are there some other reasons that maybe we did not clear on?

Yeah, thank you, Mayor.

Appreciate the question.