The meeting covered a wide range of topics, including an update on the Focus Action Plan, authorization to issue an RFP for the historic Kempsville quadrant, the 2025 Disparity Study findings and recommendations, a deferred vote on the sale of Virginia Beach National Golf Course, approval of a mixed-use development on Shore Drive, and denial of three short-term rental conditional use permits on 20th and 20th Half Streets. The session included extensive public comments and council deliberation.
Yeah, I have to make the announcement on the closed caption first. Before we get started, I'd like to let everyone know that the captioning in the room is currently unavailable. If anyone needs captioning, it is available on Facebook or by downloading the VB now app. And you can see the clerk, Manda porn should be so Mr. Mayor, members of council. The first briefing will be given by Deputy City Manager Monica Krosky. She'll brief the council in the public on an update regarding our focus action plan. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Madam Vice Mayor, City Manager. Every two years, City Council comes together and you have discussions, you work with a facilitator and you talk about your priorities. You get feedback from the community. Well, you do that year round, but we also do some specific engagement with the community around your uh strategy plan. And uh semi-annually, we do a public report to give you progress update. Um I always like to talk about the intentionality behind this plan. I think governments get criticized a lot about doing a lot of plans and they sit on shelves. Uh that's the opposite of what this focus action plan is, heavy emphasis on the word action. Um every single month, the deputy city managers, assistant city managers, and I, we meet with all of the departments to talk about the progress, the initiatives in the plan quarterly. We then get before our city manager and we give him updates on our progress. He asks us questions. Every single department that reports to the city manager has a departmental performance plan and some of their initiatives tied to your focus action plan. And just about every Thursday, the city managers meeting with departments to go over their progress. So there's a lot of intentionality built in to make sure that we make movement on what your priorities are. Um this particular focus action plan, there are 45 initiatives. Um I will not go over all 45. I'll just do a sampling. And next month, early September, we will have the official year-in report for fiscal year 26 that will go over every single initiative within the plan. Uh there are three focus areas in this strategic plan, focus action plan, people, places, partnerships. People really is about centering the residents' voices, um, making sure that the services we provide, how we provide them are rooted in their feedback. It's also about taking care of the people who serve our community. So emphasis on public safety, which is the foundation of any communities and people. Places really acknowledges that we need to have places for people to work, uh, places for people to live, and places for people to play. So things like Rudy Park, VB Trail, um, economic development are in places. And then finally, partnerships is recognizing that as government, it doesn't make sense for us to do it alone. Uh, there makes uh there are times when it makes sense to leverage community partners to advance an initiative. Uh so the partnerships um key focus area is all about how can we leverage community assets to advance priorities. So let's get started with some highlights. Uh, first up is a people initiative, public safety. Um, you all have been investing pretty um heavily in EMS. It's a time when people need us most. They were probably at their dire uh hour, and making sure that we are positioned to help them is of importance to you all. Um, you all invested in 24 new positions back in November. Um, and uh assistant city manager Stroud and his staff were able to hire 24. And in addition to hiring uh those 24 FTEs, he also implemented a staffing model 2472. And what that is is you work 24 hours and then you have 72 hours off. And what that does is that offers uh work life balance for the employee, um, helps with burnout. What it does for us as the employer is it provides a stable foundation for scheduling. Um, so you will know that you have a 24-hour period that's covered for the ambulances, and then for those career employees who still choose to operate on a 12-hour shift, it's easier to stack it. And the fruits of that is in this graph. Uh, the blue, well, the graph represents um a quarter, average staffing of the ambulances by hour. And what you'll see is the orange is the fiscal year after we went to 2472 the quarter.