This meeting of the Virginia Beach City Council covered multiple key topics, including the Coastal Storm Risk Management (CSRM) project update, departmental budget briefings, and the adoption of the comprehensive plan "Imagine VB 2040." Public comments were heard regarding real estate tax increases, the meals tax, and specific zoning cases. The council voted on several items, with the most debated being the comprehensive plan adoption.
Director LJ Hansen presented an update on the Army Corps of Engineers study for coastal flood protection. He outlined four stormwater program elements, emphasizing that the CSRM component lacks dedicated funding. The study has evolved from a $3M, 3-year "SMART" framework to a $13.5M "Complex" study (city share $6.67M) due to inflation and revised cost estimates. The current recommendation is to select the Lynnhaven Inlet surge barrier as the "early actionable element" for 35% design, which includes tainer gates and a rising sector gate. Staff and the Army Corps concur on this choice. The barrier is expected to protect against tidal surge, with estimated closures averaging 26 hours for hurricanes and 45 hours for nor’easters. Historical data suggests closures would have increased from 7 (1930s) to 19 (2010s). The council concurred with the recommendation, contingent on enhanced public engagement.
The plan was the subject of significant debate. Public speakers (Jessica Wendish, Melissa Drought, Lisa Murphy, Usha El Sularpu) raised issues: the naming of the "Green Line Context Area" (changed to "Courthouse Context Area" by planning commission), inclusion of industrial development south of the green line, and perceived lack of public input on final changes. Councilmembers argued over the naming and process, with some advocating deferral. The motion to defer failed 3-8. The plan was then adopted 8-3.
And we're about to get started. Mr. So at this time we'll be joined by Director L Day Hansen. He'll come in on Bruce City Council over about our request that we have for City Council for concurrence as it relates to next steps regarding the coastal storm risk management project. And as you all know, this is the Army Corps project that the city's partnering with to help deliver solutions for controlling the Atlantic Ocean's impacts to see the horizon for Ghost. Go ahead. The floor is yours. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor City Council. I apologize in advance. It's going to be a very heavy dose of me today. If you saw the agenda, uh, I have several presentations. I'll try to be concise though. Uh the uh first presentation, as the manager pointed out, I'd like to give an update on where we stand on the coastal storm risk management or the CSRM feasibility study that's being conducted by the Army Corps of Engineers. Um our agenda will start off with a little bit of background to uh remind council and the those viewing uh exactly what we're doing, why we're doing it, a little bit of an overview of our stormwater program, and uh go over a recommendation that we have for city council. Uh as the manager pointed out, we're looking for city council to either concur or give additional guidance if if you don't concur with us, and then talk a little bit about funding and what that recommendation might meet uh as we get to the end and even timeline and next steps as we get to the end. Um council has seen this slide before, but I I think it's uh beneficial to point out that when we talk about stormwater in public works, there's really four elements that we're talking about. And sometimes they all get conflated. And when people talk to us about stormwater, uh you may not think of them in this way, but all the time when we're talking about stormwater, I am all the time dividing it up into these four different buckets. And the first is stormwater operations in the upper left. That's where we talk about taking care of the infrastructure that we already have, cleaning the ditches that we already have, maintaining pump stations that we already have, cleaning pipes, uh, that type of thing. Uh the flood protection program, we're all very familiar with that. That's the new infrastructure that is being built, and we have several large-scale projects that are going on around town, uh around city, rather. Uh the flood protection program, though, is focused on recurrent flooding, that is rainfall events that are coming into the city. Uh, they might be related to a nor'easter, it might be related to a hurricane, but it's the rain that we're trying to deal with on the flood protection program. In the lower left, we have the regulatory aspect of stormwater, and that's where our staff make sure that we're in compliance with the laws, that we're discharging clean water from an environmentally safe standpoint. Uh the city maintains uh an MS4 permit, and we make sure that we stay in compliance. And then the lower right, which is what we're going to talk about today, the coastal storm risk management component. Uh I'll talk a little bit more about that as we get to the next couple of slides. I also think it's important that we recognize how we pay for the different elements of stormwater. Um the stormwater ERU or the stormwater fund currently funds aspects of regulatory operations and some of our FPP projects. Reminder, some of our FPP projects were there before the bond referendum. So we still have some flood protection projects that are funded by the stormwater ERU. We also have a 2.5 cent real estate dedication uh called the stormwater lock box. That pays for stormwater operations and regulatory, in large part it pays for staff, and some of those staff work on the FPP. So the dash line around the FPP, that 2.5 cent real estate dedication doesn't actually go towards uh the construction, the capital costs of the FPP, but it does fund our operations and making sure that we can administer it. And then the FPP itself is the 4.1 cent real estate dedication, and that goes entirely 100% to our new development for our um flood protection program, and again, that is for rainfall events. The one item that I haven't talked about is the item we're talking about today, and that's coastal storm risk management. If you'll notice, none of the boxes circled around coastal storm risk management, and that's because we don't really have a bill payer. But up until this point, we've largely been focused on the study behind what we're intending to do and looking ahead. So the the costs in comparison to the other aspects have been relatively low. So today's briefing, we're going to talk a little bit about where we stand in the CSRM study and some new requirements that we got from the Army Corps of Engineers. We're going to talk about the need to select one early actionable element from that study and the importance of us selecting that that component so that we can stay on uh schedule. And the study is a first step towards us being able to get federal funding assistance on these large scale capital projects. And again, if you recall, these are projects that are going to protect us from coastal storm inundation. That's where I caution kind of jokingly say it's where the ocean's coming to get us. It's where there's a storm off our coast. Could be a nor'easter, could be a hurricane. But typically we're talking about tidal surge events where the tide is coming up, uh, usually because of a of a storm. Um, and it is coming into the interior part of the city and stealing our capacity to be able to handle with flooding uh additional flooding events.