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

Uh Madam Clerk, we call the role, please.

Councilman Bowman.

Present.

Vice Mayor Brown.

Here.

Councilwoman Campbell.

Present.

Councilwoman Ferry.

Present.

Councilwoman Harper.

Present.

Councilwoman Muggler.

Present.

Mayor Gray.

President.

And uh before we get started on the first item, uh, I want to publicly acknowledge um uh the presence of our new uh marketing and communication strategist.

Um this is her first meeting.

Welcome.

And um, we know you very familiar with our city through your work on the uh Fort Monroe Authority and some other things, so uh we you know you can pretty much hit the ground running, so uh glad to have you on board.

Okay,

City Manager, will you introduce the first item?

Yes, thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Our first item today is an update on the proposed twenty twenty-seven legislative priorities package for the General Assembly.

As you know, we presented a proposed package to you a couple of months ago, but there were certain tweaks uh that have been made uh based upon feedback from council members and just changing circumstances at the state.

And so we thought before you adopted it this evening, it would be helpful to have Ed Reed, the vice president of two capitals consulting who does our lobby work for us to just review the the slight tweaks and changes that have been made so that the public is fully aware and more transparent about the final adoption that will occur this evening.

So I'm pleased to introduce Ed Reed.

All

right, thank you, City Manager, and good afternoon.

Um Mayor Gray, Vice Mayor Brown, members of council, city manager, uh senior uh deputy city attorney and city clerk.

Uh it is great to be with you again.

Um I was with you briefly on September 9th, I believe it was to give you that overview of the entire agenda, and as the city manager has indicated, I hope to be brief before you this afternoon just to provide you with an update based on the valuable feedback that we received from you and uh city staff that helped re find our uh policy positions a bit, um, but also added a couple of legislative uh priorities based on both the needs you have here locally, but also understanding some of the realities of the upcoming um session.

And so you I'm gonna skip right to the timeline here.

You'll see that we are um time uh and in fact um I know the mayor will be happy about this because it's been a priority for a couple of years, but we are tracking two weeks uh ahead of schedule as it relates to approving our legislative agenda, which I know our state delegation is also excited about so that we can get the information over to them uh a bit sooner as well.

And so I know we will um be having uh our annual legislative uh breakfast um on November 12th is with the delegation um as well.

And so as soon as the agenda is adopted, we'll begin socializing that with members of your state delegation.

So jumping right in, uh the first is uh related to a tweak and amendment to the the issue of um Liz pendans, and this is um only really to uh mirror what um the Virginia Municipal League has included in their uh policy program for the upcoming session, and so this will significantly be give you the authority to bolster um the city's ability to enforce the Virginia Uniform Statewide Building Code, ensuring that pending violations carry over doing uh properly uh property own ownership changes.

And so the mayor serves on um the VML serves as uh the chair of the VML legislative committee, um and we were able to get this as a priority for for their program in the upcoming session as well.

Uh the next is some expanded authority that requests and through uh legislative uh requests and um we've added language to specifically expand local authority to regulate retail tobacco establishments.

Um this provides with some necessary flexibility to address concerns around some of the proliferation of vape shops and convenience stores um in communities.

So there's a thought that there's some tweaks needed to some of the ongoing regulations as it relates to to some of those uh regulations.

Uh related to a few updated policy positions that we had, and so um consistent with the feedback that we uh got from council on September 19th.

We did add um a policy statement related to Minnhaden conservation and the ability to advocate for the ongoing study and enhance management uh strategies as it relates to to Minnhaden.

So you'll see that under the resiliency and environment uh section.

Under community development, there was a policy statement added related to uh a request for flexibility regarding state license group homes, uh allowing for reasonable caps to balance community objectives with the state requirements um that are in place.

And so um this again just gives a little bit additional expansion of local zoning flexibility, and this is uh added in the community development policy statement.

As it relates to uh economic development, um we we looked at this the city's master plan um as it relates to infrastructure and economic development initiatives and um we included a support statement for renewing the state authorized one percent state sales tax for tourism projects, um and again that that is um consistent with the city's master planning uh process.

And then lastly, um uh in terms of our updates to the policy statements was relative to collective bargaining under the fiscal responsibility and revenue generation section.

Um that would uh update the the stance that we have on collective bargaining and basically stating if um collective bargaining is is mandated at the state level, um, it ensures that we preserve our fiscal management um and uh local authority here to be able to to deal with collective bargaining.

And so given kind of where we are and the scope and environment in the General Assembly session, this gives us a bit more flexibility during session to be able to adapt to whatever the legislation changes are that happened in Richmond.

And so with that, I'm happy to answer any questions that you um that you have, but uh the agenda is set to be on your consent agenda uh this evening.

Questions from council members.

Um I just want to bring up city manager about you know our discussion about the uh possibility of introducing some legislation regarding the use of uh photo enforcement speed limits in areas where we have identified that speeding is a problem through data collection and you know accident collection and those kinds of things.

And I had not had a chance to get with Mr.

Reed yet to fill him in on our full conversation, but I think the flavor of the conversation was there are members of our delegation who indicated that they might be willing to sponsor something if it were based on accident data.

Um, and then also we've always thought it might make sense to also for these neighborhood streets where we get a lot of complaints if the neighborhood signed off on it at some supermajority level, whether that's two-thirds or three-fourths, um, that might give the General Assembly comfort that it's not being done, you know, for some monetary reason, but rather to address a real concern that's been identified either by data and/or the neighborhood asking for that assistance.

So we believe, and we can talk offline about the the delegate who would be willing to take the lead on that with you.

Yeah, I appreciate the the comment and question, and and I should uh also note that today's presentation was only the tweaks and amendments to to the to the program.

I we actually have an item in the I think final uh legislative agenda that's on your docket for this evening uh that actually includes a request, a legislative request for that based on the data and some of what you hear from the neighborhood.