On August 12, 2026, the Virginia Beach City Council convened for a formal session that included a briefing on a new electronic voting platform, consideration of 13 planning items, a lengthy public hearing on the proposed sale of the Virginia Beach National Golf Course, and several other items. The meeting lasted over four and a half hours, with public comment periods drawing significant attendance and impassioned testimony.
So, Mr. Mayor, members of the council, welcome back from recess. The first briefing will be a briefing provided by our IT department. It'll be a briefing on your voting platform system. Right? So it's a new system. And we're gonna briefly the council on how to use it. All right. So Tia Harrington with the IT department, she's a solutions manager. We'll come into the presentation. Okay. Hi, my name is Tia Harrington for Information Technology. I don't want to. We can't hear you. Okay. Is that better? Okay. Hi, my name is Tia Harrington for Information Technology. I'm here to present on a new voting platform and device upgrade. The new voting platform will have a new look and feel for council members and for the public. The voting devices will be changing from a Windows device to an iPad. The voting process and procedures will remain the same. For the motioning and voting process, the process will stay the same. What a clerk will still call for the mover and seconder, and record them in the system prior to the vote being opened. Once the clerk opens the vote, the screens shown will show the council. The voting buttons are I, nay, abstain, and absent. Once chosen, the voting buttons will change to the colors to reflect the selected button. I will change the green, nay to red, abstain to yellow, and absent to blue. The vote buttons can be selected by touching the iPad screen. After the clerk closes the vote, the finding voting results will show to each council member on the iPad. On the council display screen, the final voting results will have a new look. The screen will display the agenda item, the mover, and the seconder recorded for the item, and a vote summary. The vote summary now displays names only, not your pictures. The names are in order by mayor, vice mayor, and then the council members' names are in alphabetical order by last name. For registered speakers, the chamber display has a new look. The public will be able to view the agenda item, the name of the current speaker only, and the screen will also have a shows a timer. The timer for the application will not be used. The official timer for speakers will continue to be the timer located on electurn. A new feature within the application is when the application is idle for a period of time or when changes are made to the agenda. The iPad will need to be refreshed to ensure you are viewing the current agenda and the voting functionality works. The refresh instructions have been placed. The steps for refreshing the iPad are find your name in the right corner, select the current meeting, and then click the play button, and these steps will refresh the screen. So one iPad will show the voting screen prior to the votes being cast, and a second iPad will show the refresh process. Do y'all have any questions? I'll be close. Is that right? Well, yours has a mouse, ma'am. Everybody else's will be a touch screen. Okay. Yes.