On March 25, 2026, the Virginia Beach City Council met to receive an award for resident satisfaction and to hear the proposed FY26-27 operating and capital budgets from the city manager and budget director. Council members discussed tax relief, infrastructure investments, and workforce compensation.
Oh, we called this meeting. Yes, Mr. Mayor. Present city council and nounce to the public uh tremendous honor we receive from ETC regarding the residential satisfaction survey. And Monica's gonna let council know about the award we received and also just the meaning of it and where it places Virginia Beach as it relates to our peers in the nation. Thank you, manager. Mr. Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of council. We got this award last week. It came into the mail. Um and we're really excited. Um just to give you some background on why it's so exciting. Um oftentimes in statistics they call it the bell-shaped curve, and they talk about how you usually hear from folks on either extreme, really happy or really sad. So with the um resident survey being random sampled, it gets you what they call that silent majority on the bell shape curve. Um remember the survey is statistically significant. So that's social science research standard quality data. Um also important, it's demographically representative across key demographics, race, gender, age, and also geographically representative. So we got to hear from folks across all of your districts across the entire city. Um there's really two firms who are really major in this space. ETC is one of them. Um of the benefits is that you tap into their benchmarking database. It's good to see how we score over time ourselves, but it's also interesting to see how we perform against our peers. So HCC has this award called Leading the Way, and essentially it's a composite score across three indicators. Um services, the quality of customer service provided to them, and satisfaction that people feel as though they get for the value of their tax dollars and their fees. And you can see how we compare um to the other folks. In order to get this award, you had to have at least 192 composite score. Uh, we had 195, so we squeaked in, but we're still in there. Uh, the average rating is 114. Um, so it's just a tremendous honor. Um, and in the letter that they sent us last week, um, in addition to these three composite scores, they listed um the areas in which it's small font, because so many of them, where we scored 20 points or higher. Um, and it ranges from parks and rec to libraries to our schools, um, to our bulky item pickup. And I mean, there's other services where we rank higher, maybe five points higher or four points higher, but these are 15 areas where we score 20 percentage points higher than other large cities. So we are in the top 10 percent of large cities, and they mailed us this beautiful award. It's called leading the way, and it's 11 pounds. Yeah. And the 11 pounds represent the 11 cities that did the initial survey when they started decades ago. I think when I was like a little girl, they started doing these surveys. So we wanted to send it to you all, just like the letter that they sent. Um, they work in communities across the country, and to be able to create this type of culture that really trickles down from the top to the bottom of where we really excel in being excellent in delivering services to the community really starts with your stewardship, your support, um, and your leadership. So, Mr. Mayor, members of council wanted to present you with the leading the way award. And you each really have to touch it because otherwise you're not gonna believe it's 11 pounds. But Kevin, it's deceivingly heavy. So you each have to you have to pass it around. Thank you, Mr. Manager. That's my box. Yeah, we should get a day with it. Yeah. Uh let me say this is an honor bestowed on every member of this council, everybody that works for the city of Virginia Beach.