City Council Legislative Session - workshop

Thank you.

Welcome to the Hampton City Council work session. Madam Clerk, you call the roll, please.

Councilman Bowman. Present. Vice Mayor Brown.

Here.

Councilwoman Campbell. Present. Councilwoman Fairby. Present. Councilwoman Harper. Present. Councilwoman Mugler. Present. Mayor Gray.

Present. And we have several presentations on our afternoon agenda, and so I'm going to ask the City Manager to introduce the first one.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. As the council knows, and probably a lot of the community, several months ago the council took a field trip, so to speak, up to Richmond to examine different size and scoped data centers. And the reason why we did this is that increasingly localities are being presented with requests for data centers to locate in their areas and we wanted to be proactive in this effort to make sure we understood and developed a clear informed policy position in advance of any specific proposal as opposed to reacting when and if something came many of the localities across the country actually weren't proactive in developing zoning categories and and use permit requirements and things of that nature. And so data centers made arguments that they were like office buildings or like warehouses. And that's how they kind of took hold in some cities. And we didn't want to do that. We wanted to be very intentional and very clear about what the zoning framework would be, which isn't to say that we will accept them or we won't accept them, but rather that we know we need to have clear delineation about what would and wouldn't be acceptable in our community. And so with that as a backdrop, we contracted with SIR, a firm out of Richmond, to help us do an analysis of the various policy and development considerations that the council and the staff should undertake to help us develop that clear informed policy position. And the field trip that we took a couple months ago was the first step in understanding that, but only the first step. So today we wanted to give the public a briefing about what we're doing, why we're doing it, what we've learned to date, and what we still have to learn. We're not at the end of a process, and I want to be abundantly clear, we're not doing this at this point in time because there's any specific proposal that we're looking at or reacting to. Again, rather, we're really trying to set the stage to make sure we're thoughtful about it, and that unlike other localities that sort of got taken by surprise and storm, that we are upfront and engaging with the community about what makes sense for Hampton. So with that, I believe Leonard Sledge was, Leonard, were you going to kick this off, or were you going to go straight to Reid? I don't know if you wanted to do any other introductions. Leonard is our chief officer for community and economic development and I had you listed as the kicking off the presentation. So my apologies if I got that wrong.

My apologies for not being here, ma'am. Good afternoon, Mayor Gray, Vice Mayor Brown, distinguished members of Hampton City Council, City Manager Bunting, City Attorney Sidnor, Ms. Glass. City Manager Bunting stated it all. There's nothing else to be shared in terms of context. Data centers continue to be a topic of conversation, as everyone knows, nationally and also within the Hampton Roads region. And to the City Manager's point, we just wanted to ensure that we had an informed policy environment. Therefore, we're fortunate to have the opportunity to work with SIR, which is a Richmond-based consulting firm. uh which is actually helping to lead an initiative between the hampton roads region and the greater richmond region called rva 757 connects and it's my pleasure to ask mr reed watkins to come up with sir just to to provide this briefing and general overview on data centers and digital infrastructure reed thank you

Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, Vice Mayor Brown, members of council. Good to see you all. What else to set up first for me? Let's jump in. We got a lot to cover here. So let's talk about this project first and foremost. So as City Manager Bunting and Leonard Sledge outlined, this project, this is an analysis. This is not going to be making a decision, selecting a site or approving any project. This is the city doing its homework. So city trying to get this head around what is a complicated nuanced and admittedly hot topic nationally and certainly at the state level here, understand what data centers and digital infrastructure investments might look like here in Hampton on the peninsula and what they shouldn't look like, right? What's the uniquely Hampton solution to all of this? So Hampton is choosing to explore this topic and these investments proactively, not reactively. There's plenty of examples I'm sure y'all can think of of localities here in Virginia and across the state and across the nation that have been reactive when these development deals come across their desk. So let's start by zooming out a little bit. Like what's driving all this, right? And the first and the biggest part of this is that our world is digital more than ever. The amount of data that is copied, shared, stored, transformed is not growing linearly, it's growing exponentially. As a society, we are more and more digital. And so our use of digital tools and services is really the driver of investments in digital infrastructure and data centers across the country. We're part of the demand equation here. So when we say digital infrastructure, what are we talking about here, right? You can think of digital infrastructure as plumbing for data. We intentionally use that term because data centers don't exist in a vacuum. They require energy infrastructure. They require fiber and broadband, wireless systems, satellite uplinks. the tools and systems that connect data from point to point. They also require compute and storage facilities of which data centers and edge facilities are part of that, but also the cold storage facilities where we store our family iCloud photos and stream Netflix services, et cetera, places where data is just stored. They also include, especially down here in Hampton Roads, where the federal and cyber presence is very hot, just like in Northern Virginia, cybersecurity and reliability systems, systems that allow that data is secured from endpoint to endpoint, that it remains up and active even when the climate or other situations might want to bring those systems down. and then the city itself relies on digital just like this being streamed live to folks all across the region the city relies on its own digital infrastructure to communicate with residents ensure traffic and engineering stay up to date and respond to emergencies and crises if and when they come across Hamptons borders. So we're really trying to take an ecosystem perspective of digital infrastructure, right? Knowing that data centers, this is this hot topic in this larger ecosystem. And this ecosystem is one that really underpins a lot of our daily lives today. So it's mostly behind the scenes. We don't really think about this when we wake up, but digital infrastructure is the systems that we touch from morning to night, from your weather forecast, traffic updates, how your kids sometimes do homework and complete lessons for school to streaming the game or a show or TV show, paying a bill for the city, or even the emergency 911 alert systems. All of these systems and more rely on digital infrastructure. It underpins a lot of how the world works today. And when it works, like we kind of take it for granted here in Virginia and probably in the United States, that it just works here. That's not true in every locality across the world. So we don't really notice that this incredible ecosystem lives behind under the scenes. But when it goes down, we all notice, right? When we can't stream the game or access or complete submit a homework assignment right up to the deadline, those things slow us down to get in the way. We do notice digital infrastructure at those points. But it's everywhere. And the facilities that are part of this ecosystem, the data centers, something that's often lost is these things come in all shapes and sizes. They are a continuum of facilities. All of them are essentially secure, chilled facilities with computer equipment in them, right? But the scale and size of them varies depending on the use case. So I'm sure that many of you, I'm sure there is a micro or edge facility somewhere in this building right here, right now operating, that's running City Hall, right? We have, and most businesses and organizations across Hampton Roads and largely the country, have some kind of network rack or computer closet in the organization that allows the organization to run, all the way up to several small facilities you may have driven past on your way in to work today. These things are innocuous, they're small buildings, and they're all over the place. But what's really gripped the nation and really drives the public conversation around this topic is the far end of the spectrum here, these hyperscale facilities. And they truly are in a class of their own. We tried to take a stab at kind of visualizing the footprint of what a small or medium-sized facility is compared to one that's hyperscale. And we hope it just shows that these things, like a standard facility you might drive by just vanishes. in comparison to some of these hyperscale facilities. They truly are enormous impacts. And so there's a reason that the public's hooked onto them, right? They are outsized facilities. But we would be remiss if we lost this nuance, right? And whatever our policy and development considerations are for Hampton, they should include and really be founded on this fundamental nuance that not all data centers are created equal and they serve different purposes. while keeping in mind that the public image is real. These hyperscale facilities do exist and they do have outsized impacts. But that doesn't mean that data centers are all bad, right? We shouldn't let one tier or category of these facilities paint our understanding of the entire ecosystem. And as city manager Bunting mentioned, the tour that some of y'all got to join us on early on in this project process, we went to both a small facility, the Pixel Factory National, which is a 10,000 square foot facility. And this might sound facetious, but at certain times of the day, I'm sure that the daycare facility next door is louder than that facility was that we walked in, right? Kids playing on the playground probably generate a little more noise than that facility did. But we also toured a hyperscale facility, QTS, right? That was behind gates. behind hundreds of feet of vegetation. You could kind of hear it once you got in the facility. Those are, that's a real hyperscale facility and those are real, right? That size and scale exists and you could tell the difference there. So these are both data centers, right? But that, you'd be remiss to say that that's one label that they're both the same type of facility, right? And so one type of facility, again, shouldn't paint our entire understanding of this topic. So the hyperscale facilities, they do have outsized impacts and we'd be remiss if we didn't acknowledge those, right? This is part of the political and social discourse today. And so there are some perceptions and myths out there that we got to address head on. Some are true, some are not. And that's been part of our process. So when we look at data center investments across the country, they become lightning rods for all kinds of political, societal, and economic issues. affordability, sustainability, and energy prices, kind of naming just a few of them, right? But the reason we have these images on the slide is just if you look at the signs and movements that are at these protests, it covers all different types of topics. They really are a lightning rod for issues across society. There's no really one thing that drives everyone up against to protest these facilities. And our own state did some studies on what might happen if we left data center development unchecked in Virginia. So as you might imagine, this is probably an implausible scenario at this point, but if we were to say yes to every facility, by 2040, they would project that our statewide electricity usage would go up by about 183% from what it is today. And our average power bill might increase by about $40 per user per month. So that's not nothing. But that is if we let data center investment go unconstrained in the state. And perhaps one of the most, a sign of how things are nationally is a recent Gallup study that found 71% of Americans oppose a data center in the area, which is almost 20% more than those that would oppose a nuclear power plant. So there's no doubt data shows there's no doubt that these hyperscale facilities they are a um they have hit a nerve a political and social nerve in the united states and we have to keep that in mind as we consider what the city's point of view and policy should be with these facilities But again, these, at least the impacts for Virginia, reflect an unconstrained scenario, which if you've been following the news here in the statewide level, that is very unlikely to happen. But that would be a reality here. So let's look at each of these issues in context, starting with power, because power really is, this is true. The data centers are outsized users of power, and it is the single gating constraint. If you talk to folks in the industry, it's a single gating constraint for where they might choose a locality or another, is if they have access to power. And so we've tried to layer up against some kind of average facilities you might have in mind of what power usage of some of these facilities looks like. And hyperscale data centers are at the bottom in red. Absolutely, they are in a class of their own. We're looking at 100 plus megawatts of power. There's nothing that we could find that really in our analysis that really compares to the power usage of one of these hyperscale facilities. And close behind are these large co-location facilities where there might be multiple tenants in a single building. They do use outsized amounts of power. But compared, when you think about the facilities you might have driven by on your way to work in today or the facilities that are in this building, you know, large hospitals, NFL stadiums, university campuses all use way more power than those facilities. So you're, again, just coming back to this point of there's nuance to this, right? Not all facilities are created equal and the scale really depends, really impacts what kind of what kind of usage they will have on the grid. So again, but we'd be remiss in not pointing out that larger facilities do have an outsized impact on the grid, and that is a truth no matter where they get built. So let's look at water, the next one we hear a lot about. So in comparison to the power usage stats, Water is modest or even negligible by comparison. Again, the hyperscale facilities in the same category do use an outsized amount of water. But compared to some advanced in manufacturing and industrial processes, it's still less than stuff that we have across the country operating today. That is also just slightly more than like an 18-hole golf course. So the larger and mid-size and smaller facilities are all using less water than in 18-hole golf courses. And in years past, these facilities may have only run on air chilling, like they would be chilled through standard HVAC systems. And some facilities use water cooling. And in the past they might have used like evaporative cooling techniques. So they would have pumped water in that would have been evaporated off as it chilled things. But modern facilities typically use closed loop systems that do require, you know, they need to ingest water into the system, but they will circulate that for days or weeks or months at a time. So the net drain on any water system is very different today than it would have been in years past. I mean, the operators of these businesses, they're in business, right? They are trying to deliver value to customers and make money. And so any things that they can do to be more efficient, use less resources they're going to invest in because it'll help drive the bottom line. And cooling through water usage is one of those, just like power is. So water's a different story from power. Still up there, especially for the hyperscale facilities, but just not in the same league. And then noise is another one we hear all the time. You know, these facilities are extremely noisy. I can hear them while I sleep. And when we looked at the average, the research on this, on average, even a hyperscale facility is quieter than a busy street or a vacuum cleaner in your home, right? now the thing i think from our analysis what really drives people's perceptions of these facilities being really loud is when they run backup generators and these facilities as part of their operating agreement need to stay up they need to stay operational 99.999 percent of the time right and so in order to do that to maintain that reliability they have backup generators on site which they usually will do like monthly testing on and no doubt just like in your residential community, if you got a neighbor that has one of those backup generators installed in their home, it is loud when it fires up and they run these things on a monthly test record. So there is no doubt when they were testing these generators, that is a loud noise, but it's monthly and it's intermittent at best. It's not a constant hum. so for the again if you all for those of you all that got to join us at pixel factor some of these smaller facilities you can barely tell that it's a data center at all it runs hvac just like our homes and businesses do so it's no louder than standard hvac so again in the noise it really depends on the scale but it's not quite as large of an impact again compared to the power usage of these facilities and then another perception we hear is that data centers are hazardous they are risky places to to live near and work in but as i said earlier these are essentially secure buildings with computer equipment in them secure chilled buildings or they're cooled rooms that we we store expensive equipment in and run So there is nothing chemically or emission-wise or radiation electromagnetic or otherwise that comes out of these buildings besides maybe the noise that that HVAC generates and the light, the data that's sent in and out of these facilities. So they are, you know, and inside the facility, if you're working in one of these, they have all the same hazards that any OSHA facility might have, right? You need to wear a hard hat in the halls. You need to wear... hearing protection while you're in the data halls because they're loud hums, right? If you're working in these facilities, yeah, you're in high voltage environments. You do need to be careful what you touch and what you put your hands on. But in general, they have the same hazards that any other warehouse facility would have inside for those that work. So bottom line on the health and safety thing is You know, internally, the safety concerns are managed through our standard OSHA processes, right? It's the workers need to be trained to work in these specialized environments. But externally, for the folks that live near these places, besides the noise that you might hear from backup generators, the hum of the HVAC, the only thing that's really being emitted from these facilities is the light, the data that they transmit or transform. So why are they such a hot topic? Why are localities so hell-bent on trying to land some of these? Well, they are a unique type of investment. For one, they don't require a lot of manpower um to operate so for every dollar of public services they might use in terms of like water or wastewater or whatever that might be they return 13 to 26 dollars of that right because they're not large net draws on the public utility system around them They also, because of all the expensive equipment that goes into these facilities, they are at the highest concentration of valuable machinery and tools that you can get in a facility, right? I mean, some of these facilities have billions of dollars worth of just equipment of just networking gear and compute power, and that just blows other manufacturing, other facilities out of the water in terms of just the dollar per square foot. So averages that we could find in our research was it's like three times the value of per square foot of other commercial uses. Then these facilities, they're essentially like as I said before, they're secure, cooled shells where we can run high-end computer equipment out of for years to come. So they're not just flash-in-the-pan things that get built and demolished in five years. These are investments that the developers and operators are going to want to keep using for decades to come, right? So they're long-lived assets that continuously recycle the very expensive equipment that goes into them and return this high value per square foot. So that concentrated value there. So that discounts the job size of this, right? Because while these facilities have all of this expensive equipment in them, they don't really, in the way of direct employment, generate a ton of jobs. It doesn't take a lot of people to operate one of these data centers. So even at the QTS facility that we visited earlier this year, you're only talking about a couple hundred folks that are needed to run that giant facility day in and day out. Now, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that there is an entire supporting cast of characters, a supporting industry that allows these facilities to work. HVAC, electricians, plumbing, all of these things are requiring industrial grade cooling, water, electrician, electrical systems. There is a CASA workforce, a supporting workforce that isn't full-time employed on these facilities, but it's absolutely called to help them maintain, repair, upgrade, you name it, the systems that are in place in these. Those businesses, the supporting CAS, those industries are booming these days because there's a lot of demand for their services that wouldn't exist otherwise. But as far as the jobs that are onsite and full-time, yes, they're high skill, but very small workforce compared to the dollar value that goes into these things. And so as a result, depending on the scale here, Virginia localities deploy the revenue they receive from these facilities in a number of ways. Some counties in Virginia use that fund, that revenue to fund entire portions of sometimes outsized portions of their budget. Other localities have take direct tax revenue from data centers investment and use it to fund schools. Or like in Central Virginia and Henrico County, they've set up a dedicated affordable housing trust fund. Others are in the state, there's examples of others who have asked the developers to help them. If you're going to help us tap into our water system, we want you to help us modernize or improve it. The benefits that come to these localities, they're not set in stone. They're up to the localities to determine and negotiate. They range from broad automatic general fund revenue streams to more deliberate negotiated type benefits. But those also scale with size, right? So the localities that like Henrico County in Central Virginia that have massive hyperscale data center footprint, they can fund a $60 million affordable housing trust fund. Now, looking at the city of Hampton and really the peninsula region here, I don't see where or through our analysis i should say we don't really see where y'all are going to be able to support any kind of hyperscale facility so i don't we don't think that a hyperscale facility is even on the table for hampton or the peninsula so on one hand that means like the the outsized benefits of these facilities like the ability to fund parts of your tax base or fund schools or whatever it might be that's probably off the table for hampton But that does not mean that you couldn't generate some deliberate negotiated deal for a smaller footprint, smaller funding amount right from a smaller or mid-sized facility that may have a chance of landing somewhere in Hampton down the road. Again, that's all potential. There is no site or deal on the table from this project. This is just exploratory. For Hampton, this looks like these facilities could be a general fund contributor, a small one at that. They're not going to revamp the city's tax base overnight. But that's up to the city of Hampton to decide. There is no set rule on how you deploy revenue that comes from these. And I can, from our work on this, we've interviewed a bunch of the anchor and regional stakeholders here on the peninsula, including some local universities, healthcare systems, financial institutions, innovation and tech leaders, and all of them are talking about some form of cloud or digital infrastructure investment, migration, transformation. They're all exploring this technology. So someone at some point is gonna want to build more localized compute, digital infrastructure, networking, you name it, somewhere on the peninsula. It's gonna be part of their operating model into the future. So for a university system that might look being able to do more high intensity compute and offer new classes and capabilities and provide new analyses that they could do in different labs on site. Or for a regional healthcare system, it could look like being able to support the tens of thousands of connected devices that go into modern healthcare and essentially saving more lives through additional connectivity and bandwidth. And then to regional innovation folks saying that, you know, all of the pieces are in place here on the peninsula. You guys have a very unique mix of anchor, both federal and private organizations that make that could make y'all a test bed, a hot place for innovation if and when the infrastructure and ecosystem evolves around them to support them, right? So whether it's either of these or in others, right? I didn't mention the financial service and all that. All of these facilities and organizations are going to be investing in digital infrastructure in some way in the future. So it's not just the city that's going to be... concerned with modernizing its own digital infrastructure. It's the businesses that make Hampton, the Gulf Peninsula, and Hampton home. And so when we look out across the country, data center investments don't just show up in nowhere, right? If you look at the map here, data center investment over the last couple of years, there's not a lot going on in Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, and South Dakota, right? Virginia, Arizona, California, and Texas especially in the last year or so, we are all the front lines of this data center investment. And that's because these investments go where low cost or reliable power, strong connectivity of which Virginia, because of our relationship to Northern Virginia and all the federal facilities and institutions up there, and then also down here in Hampton Roads, all of the cyber facilities down here, we have some really robust fiber infrastructure that runs all throughout the state. So connectivity, talent is also here in Northern Virginia and in Hampton Roads on the cyber side of things. And flexible regulatory environments overlap. So these kind of four legs of the stool are required in order for investment to seek you out. And that's why Virginia is so hot in this marketplace. It's why that we're, along with Texas and California and Washington State and some other states, other states will be looking to how we make decisions about this technology because we're going to deal with it first and the most so far. And so on that bigger picture, I mentioned that, or Leonard kind of teed up the fact that we work with RBA 7x7 Connects, which is a mega regional organization that's trying to leverage the business and infrastructure assets of both Richmond and Hampton Roads to enhance our collaboration as a single combined market. And when you look at the assets that make up the Richmond, Central Virginia region and Hampton Roads, together we have these four enablers in spades. We have robust terrestrial networks. We have an internet exchange in Central Virginia where internet traffic is routed and deployed to other parts of the network nationally. We have diverse energy sources. We have a deep tech and cyber talent pool. And so we have all of the makings, not something that's unique nationally, but globally. And so RVS Semi-Summit Connects is trying to enable the region to really stand up and proclaim and own the fact that we are a global internet hub and all of the industries and benefits that might accrue to one of these few places globally on the world stage. So that's happening at the mega regional level. At the regional level here, the Hampton Roads Alliance, the regional economic development organization has defined through their deal framework, four industries that they see as already defining the region and what they want to double down on and invest in into the future. And those are defense, energy, aerospace, and logistics. And talking with folks at the Alliance through this work and others, you can bet that digital infrastructure is a foundational element to all four of those industries, right? the the defense energy aerospace and logistics industries of the future are going to run on digital technology and so they want to anyone that you want to try and attract to the region is going to want to understand what does the digital infrastructure look like because it's going to be core to their business moving forward and then in your own draft strategic plan i know it's in draft format here but you all even have a strategy around investing in infrastructure including internet connections and to recruit industries that align with hampton's strengths including emerging tech. So this is something that y'all are stating as a city as a strategic priority. So you're already part of a mega region, a region and locality that is taking digital infrastructure seriously. And this project just kind of dovetails with that very nicely, I think. Y'all are treating this as a strategic decision to make, not a cash grab, right? This is a strategic lever for the region. And so when, this is just a little background on the project, when we look at trying to understand what y'all's digital infrastructure policy could be, it's a nuanced topic, right? So we broke it into 10 different work streams or categories of vision, siting, fiber infrastructure, water and power, you name it, all down the list here. And so we've tried to investigate with our team, talking with members of Hampton's staff, the city staff, to understand what, for example, your sustainability standards might be. What is uniquely Hampton? what incentives or community trust expectations should we have built into our recommendations so that what we deliver to y'all at the end of this process is not some generic boilerplate digital infrastructure policy, something that's uniquely Hampton that fits the locality and community that calls this place home. so city manager bunting already mentioned this but one of those recommendations is going to be some kind of zoning decision right because as she mentioned there is no current zoning for digital infrastructure and data centers in hampton roads or in excuse me in the city of hampton so in order for you all to kind of get your hands around these facilities and treat them like the nuanced use case that they are you're going to need to explore some kind of zoning ordinance to to define them and whether you tier that based on the size of the facility recognizing that hyperscale facilities represent enormous impacts on power water potentially noise community impacts while smaller facilities don't that nuance could be included in your in your in your ordinance here but bottom line here is that this is um you really this is this is the most important tool in y'all's toolbox as a city to take control of this and have a clear policy on this as having some kind of zoning ordinance and we'd be remiss if we didn't mention that similar work is happening across mercury boulevard and newport news right for to y'all um you you see that as dividing line there's two localities but for the rest for most of the region um you're one peninsula And so whatever we come up with for recommendations and policy for the city of Hampton, it needs to talk or at least coordinate with what's going on in the important news as well. Because developers and businesses will look at y'all as a market, not two individual localities. So people might live in one and work in another. And so we've got to find a way to make sure that there is some regional coordination when this thing is finally delivered. again that's down the road there's nothing set in stone as city manager bunting mentioned but um that's just something we want to keep in mind as we move into the final stages of this process and so um i'll kind of end where we started here of what we'll be delivering at the end of this project so we want to deliver a a tight analysis of policy and development considerations for digital infrastructure and data centers and that's going to include a clear vision like where this fits what's right and not right for the city of hampton some recommendations for where you should go next, whether that's from a zoning ordinance or standards definitions, you name it, that could be a lot of things included in there. That could be applied across sites to have some nuance that we've talked about earlier in the show today. Identify some resources, partners, performance matters, things that y'all could do to put in place to demonstrate transparency, hold developers accountable, and make sure that you keep everyone honest and open no matter what deal comes across your table down the road. And then we want this to be shared ready for use, right? This is, we've looked out, we've tried to look as part of our analysis of other cities and localities are doing this across the country. Y'all are being very proactive and ahead of the curve on this. So we wanna make sure that y'all have the ability to share and hold this final set of policy recommendations up and have it be a playbook for your own digital infrastructure leadership, showing that the city of Hampton is truly forward-thinking and innovative when it comes to data centers and digital infrastructure more broadly. That's it. Any questions?

Questions? Councilman Bowman.

uh i want to say thank you for the presentation um did an outstanding job about a year ago i think we approached this just wanted to get a look at it and i can tell you honestly none of us knew anything about data centers we were all just simply born off of perceptions so with the tour that was planned um the two facilities that we visited the information that you gave us um it's it was an eye opener There are things that we can discuss to our constituents if someone has a question. But what I did ask the city manager to do is set up a town hall meeting so actually the citizens can hear what we heard and the perception can go away, you know, concerning the noise, water use, electricity, the sizes, because like I said, we saw small ones, large ones. So it was definitely eye-opening. But again, I want to thank you for the time. FOR PUTTING THIS TOGETHER FOR US. THANK YOU. THANK YOU.

ANY OTHER QUESTIONS? SO LET ME BACK UP TO A COUPLE OF YOUR SLIDES. ONE, YOU KIND OF LAID OUT WHAT'S DRIVING THE NEED FOR DATA CENTERS. AND I GUESS HERE IN THE CITY, We have servers somewhere in a server room which is a, I guess, a small scale data center because it has racks and it has servers on it. I guess, you know, there's this TV station and this infrastructure probably runs on a server and a computer network and I guess our 911 radio system probably operates on a server somewhere and that server is stored somewhere in this building or offsite somewhere. And so you talked about the demand for servers and the demand for data centers is driven by the increased demand for digital infrastructure through the products and systems that we use every day. So, you know, there are a lot of people who are concerned about data centers. And but what what happens if we say if our policy position is no data centers in Hampton well let's say Hampton and Newport News because I think one city in the region recently said no to mega data centers I don't I don't I'm assuming that means that they're open to a certain size but they said no to mega data centers. So if we as a region decide that we don't want data centers What does that mean for our region in terms of economic development, job creation, and so forth, not with the data center industry, but with those who may consider wanting to bring a high-tech business to our community?

That's a great question, Mayor Gray. access to digital tools and services underlies like most ways that business gets done today. So whether it's defense, energy, aerospace or logistics like the deal framework for the Hampton Roads Alliance or financial services or healthcare or higher education, all of them are gonna look for and be looking for, and I can tell you through our conversations, are looking for access to compute resources and digital infrastructure today and tomorrow. So you can see it as this foundational element to getting work done today and well into the future. So being totally against like a blanket no to all data centers would limit businesses and organizations' ability to grow and evolve with technology as it does, right? And that would probably cut across many, many industries, not just the four that are in that deal framework. It would be, yeah, it's a foundational element there.

You know questions comments. Council members OK. All right. Well so we'll look forward to your final analysis on this and what we you know what I take away is often there and but thank you for a great presentation today which I hope is informative even for us that I agree with Councilman Bowman I mean we all heard about data centers but until you stepped inside of one and I'm going to see what it is and what it looks like and understanding how it works and how it uses water and you know the difference in a large scale data center in a small scale data center was was very informative for us to be able to understand what they are what they're all about.

So imagine awesome mayors we transition, I just acknowledge for the public record we will work to set up one or more probably more than one of those town halls or round tables that Councilman Bowman and you were describing. So we give the public the chance to interact and ask the questions they want to ask and express what they want us to take into consideration before we get to a proposed zoning structure. But just to wrap it up, um in case people came in late it's really essential that we look at this proactively so that we don't end up behind the eight ball so we'll continue to move this along this summer and early fall in hopes that we can bring you a recommended zoning construct if you will that will represent what we all have learned collectively about it and also what we hear from the public that they would like to see reflected okay thank you thank you thank you very much Mr. Mayor, do you want me to introduce the next item?

Yes.

The next item will be presented by Deputy City Manager Brian DiPropio on behalf of our strategic priority leaders. We have six of those. And if we had each of them speak, we would make a much longer day. But I do want to acknowledge the great work that they have been doing alongside Brian and Assistant City Manager Jason Mitchell and myself to update our strategic plan. You may recall we had a big community meeting several months back. uh... at which we asked the public to weigh in on the work that had been done by our stakeholder groups and it was it was largely validated with some tweaks we brought that to council and council made one very important observation and that was it lacked a lot of input from the youth and young adults uh... and and that's not atypical when you do things like uh... large community meetings uh... they tend to be more uh... frequented by um older and when i say older i mean 30 plus year old adults right that we're more established in our careers and our lives and so we have time to go out to meetings like this and this council i want to applaud you for being very sensitive to the fact that when we're doing a strategic plan we're planning for our community not just for the people who live here today but the people who are going to grow old and come to our community and so we really needed to have that youth voice and that includes everyone from our young people still in school to those in college and those recently graduated from high school and college and so you gave us a challenge and i want i'm really proud of the work that the strategic priority leaders and our assistant managers did to go out and respond to that challenge. Mr. DiPropria is going to update you on the work that they did do to get that youth input as well as the tweaks that came out of that. I am pleased to say that largely the youth that we added agreed with what had already been done. But they did have some interesting insights and we want to share those with you today so that you can look at how we might incorporate those and then we can bring to you after any feedback you all have an actual plan to get updated and then move into the implementation phase hopefully we'll bring it to you in August unless you have a lot of changes okay that's the point of today's meeting we're not gonna repeat everything we've given you before but really focus on the the changes that came out of the youth voices so I'll turn it over to Brian

All right, thank you very much. I'm going to dive right in. As you all know, one of the key elements that we have as we go through our strategic planning process is broad-based community engagement, as Mary had said. And one of the observations that was made was we really needed to do some focused efforts to get the youth voices engaged. And so that's what we've been doing over the last few months, the last time I was before you presenting the update on the plan. To start off, as Mary had said, the community or the additional engagement that we did and feedback that we got really reaffirmed a lot of what we had already been working on and had already established in the plan. And so the foundational elements that include the city's vision, the mission and values, those haven't changed based on the feedback that we've gotten. um also the strategic priority areas these are strategic priority areas that we've had been dealing with for several years now they include economic growth educated citizenry excellence in government safe and clean community family resilience economic empowerment living with water and place making those also haven't changed those continue to be the framework that we're working within as we as we work on finalizing the strategic plan and of course as mary had also mentioned the uh the the other uh the strategic priority leaders who've really been helping us lead this effort to get the plan completed are all listed here that have been participating at that level and so we greatly appreciate the work that they've been doing uh... additional uh... community sessions that we've had we've had online survey of community members broadly we've also done focused efforts uh... by reaching out the hampton city schools and engaging the senior classes of the high schools that uh... are are in the government classes and so They were able to bring them together in the auditoriums, and we were able to have some dialogue with them. We also conducted focus groups with college students from Hampton University, Virginia Peninsula Community College, Bryant and Stratton, and we were able to get feedback from them. And we did also do a focus group with the military, because the military is a important part of our community. There's a lot of younger folks who are engaged in the military and work for the military. So we want to get them engaged as well. And then a lot of the people that come to the hiring fairs that we have with the city are also of a younger demographic. And so we also engaged people who attended our hiring fairs since last time we briefed council in January. um now we asked several questions one of the key questions as has already been mentioned was is there overall agreement with the strategic plan and where we're heading and the answer to that question was yes we asked all these groups that same question and the answer overwhelmingly was yes that doesn't mean that we didn't get feedback that that resulted in some some recommended changes which i'll go through as i go through the presentation but you know overall they thought we were on the right track We asked questions of college students and high school students. What would encourage them to stay in Hampton? What are the types of things that we need to incorporate into the strategic plan that would make them want to stay after they graduate? And the military community, what do you look for when you relocate to a new base? What are those types of things that would attract military families to want to live and shop and visit and work in Hampton? So those are some of the key questions that we asked, and we got a lot of feedback based on those questions. And so with that, I'm going to go through in each of the strategic plan areas, kind of touch on the high level changes that we made based on the feedback that we had received. Relative to economic growth, The feedback that we got was you really need to have a stronger emphasis in the plan on the retention of existing businesses. And so that's something that of course is really a bread and butter for us. It's something that we recognize, something that we consistently try to do is grow and nurture our businesses. But they said that really needs to be in the plan. So that's one of the changes that we're making to the plan. um they also suggested that we create a new goal to expand programs to support the growth of swam businesses small women and minority businesses as council knows we've had multiple briefings on council on our swam business initiatives over the years that has continued to be a priority for us it needs to be reflected in the plan and we're making that change um also there was a a request to add additional entertainment districts in the city to give people more fun things to do in the city again that's something that we've been working on but really wasn't reflected in the plan so we really so we've added that into the plan based on that feedback Other changes to the plan under educated citizenry included apprenticeships. You know, not everybody is going to go to a four-year college university. They said, you know, you really need to reflect that in the plan. And so we've incorporated that concept into the plan as well as the importance of libraries in the continuum of lifelong learning. A lot of young families go to our libraries. experience the literacy and and and other education programs and councils at the library earlier this week we had a. Science demonstration program so there's a lot of great educational programs that take place at our libraries and the the feedback that we got really suggest that we we add that to the plan. Excellence in government. They asked us to use more inclusive language so that everybody feels as though they're part of this part of the plan. There was other changes that we made that were more administrative, for lack of a better term, where we combined two strategies to avoid repetition. There were two strategies in the plan that basically were saying the same thing, and so we've gone ahead and we've merged those. We also added references to community volunteerism. We moved two strategies from under one goal to another goal to really better align those strategies with the goal that they were under. And we created a new strategy to specifically relate to maintaining and improving the infrastructure in the city. That was another piece of feedback that we got back through the additional engagement. In terms of family resilience and economic empowerment, we created a new strategy to strengthen and coordinate community efforts to support our homeless population. Of course, in the last budget that council approved in May, that was a big emphasis in that budget, and that was something that also came through in our community engagement around the strategic plan. There were some other changes that we made in terms of moving strategies to better align under the goals like we did in the excellence in government area. And then there were some strategies, there were four strategies that were incorporated under family resilience and economic empowerment that really better fit under the place making strategy and excellence in government strategy. So we moved some strategies around. They continue to be in the plan just in different more appropriate places. Living with water, what we heard back was we're on the right track. There was really no feedback that we got on living with water that suggested that we really needed to change anything in the plan. So that remains consistent with what we presented in January. Under placemaking, there was a new strategy that was created relative to civic engagement. And then a strategy also, or some changes to a strategy to make sure that it's reflective of including all elements of the city's population. So those were the changes in placemaking. Safe and clean community. There were a handful of different changes based on the feedback that we got through our engagement. And the first one is to create new strategies emphasizing the data-driven crime prevention and targeted interventions and balanced approach to enforcement and prevention. That's something that we've been doing. We've had a heavy emphasis on our public safety strategies over the years, and so it really, that's another one of those examples of things that we are doing that really, you know, people recognize you really need to show that in the plan. They also suggest that we shift focus from reducing youth violence to preventing it. Again, that's really reflective of the strategies that we have. and have been employing in this area because we've been wanting to get youth engaged on a positive path so they don't get caught in the cycle of crime and violence. So it's really reflecting the essence of what we're doing, better reflecting the essence of what we're doing in the plan. also asked us to include more inclusive language, broaden our safe and clean efforts to reflect the work that we need to do in our business community and commercial corridors, and expand the goal to address really the changing community needs around our aging population with some additional changes that were made to the plan based on the feedback. So the next steps in the process as the city manager had outlined at the beginning is presenting this information today. The full detail of the updated draft plan is attached to this agenda item. It's also attached to our website for people to see and the actual language that was changed. And so we wanted to give council an opportunity to provide feedback and ask questions about these changes. And if there's any additional changes we need to make, we would make those between now and August 12th. Our current schedule calls for us to try to bring this back to council for final approval at the August 12th city council meeting. And then after the plan is adopted, the next step in this process will be to develop what we're calling an implementation plan. And if you think about an implementation plan, it's what are the tactics that you're really going to, what are the actions you're going to take to make those strategies happen? And so that is an ongoing effort. We continue to do that. The strategic priority areas are areas that have been in place for a long time. And so some of that will involve sort of looking at some of the existing tactics that we're using. Are those still relevant? Do those still continue? Some of it will involve, are there gaps? Are there new things that were identified in the plan that we really need to work on and identify what the actions we need to take to make those happen? And then And so one example of this and how this kind of goes is you'll recall last year, council received a presentation on improving our development permitting process. One of the strategies in the plan is to be the best and the most customer friendly development permitting process in in the region and so we already have several recommendations that came out of that study that was done previously that we're working on implementing and so that's something that we would just say okay we have this you know this is already in place we just need to get it done other things like know we're getting ready to move forward with master updating master plans for buckrow coliseum central and and downtown that process will develop will develop plans around here's how we're going to implement some things around place making some things around living with water some things around economic growth so so that will be incorporated as part of that implementation plan as that is developed so that just gives you a little bit of a flavor for for how that part of the process will work The other thing that we'll be doing is reviewing and updating our performance measures and data analytics that we use to track our performance and make better decisions. And so we really want to look at our performance measures, we want to look at the way that we're using data, and we want to make sure that we're tracking the data that helps us achieve these strategies that we've worked on and developed with the community. So that's kind of the next frontier in this process. A lot of the work, you know, continues and is ongoing. Like I said, some of these strategies we already have good solid plans around. Water plans are another example. They were mentioned in the living with water strategy area. So those plans are already in place and it's a matter of making sure that we're continuing to execute those plans and then really looking at where we might need to go. need to do a little bit better job and ensure up some areas that may have been identified that are newer in this in this process so with that that concludes my presentation as i had mentioned earlier the strategic plan is on the city's website for people to be able to view and see you know what it looks like after these changes have been incorporated so i'd be happy to take any questions or comments from council

questions comments from council members. That's one of them.

Thank you Mister mayor, thank you Brian for the presentation great presentation. I'm just trying to wrap my head around what time frame what period of time from here for

What is this plan like how long is this plan supposed to last 3 year plan a 5 year plan that the strategic plan is typically a 5 year plan and so we will be moving forward over the next 5 years we typically try to try to update about every 5 years.

I'm looking forward to you know the actionable steps that are going to come in this next phase. I think that. You know the council are all pretty comfortable with. the goal statements that we have and what you all have done to nuance them based on further community input. But thank you very much.

Thank you. And one of the things that you'll see, I think, overcoming council meetings is We use typically the second meeting of each month of council to focus on a strategic priority area. So what we'll start doing is as we talk about the things that we're doing, we'll kind of try to tie them back into the goals and strategies that you're seeing in the plan now.

city manager bunny if i may i just want to add a slight tweak to what brian said we typically i typically call them five to seven year plans because once we get this piece done to your point we need to have community-based implementation teams that are defining the specific strategies and that does take a little bit longer and that's because we view it as a community plan not just a city government plan this is not just what we as city government are going to do But what are we going to do with the faith-based community? What are we going to do with the health-based community? What are we going to do with nonprofits, neighborhoods, residents, et cetera? And we will, assuming you will all adopt this, we will then quickly convene citizen stakeholder based groups for each of the priority areas and they'll go to that next level of definition you're talking about so that because that takes time that's why i more generally say it's a five to seven year plan because there's iterative work that still needs to happen but for us to kick off that next phase this this plan we're bringing you gives the guard rails for what they would be focusing on if that makes sense

The questions comments from Council members. I got one man city manager. So and we just discussed this briefly yesterday, you know when I joined the Bloomberg city leaders program and dressing poverty was the problem that took to that program and what they invested in resources and When they decided which track, they had three tracks, one innovation, collaboration, and data. We thought that we needed to be on the collaboration track with data, but they said, no, you need to be on the data track. and so being on the data track they wanted to help us build our muscle in the use of data which is the way that they described it and uh so i thought about that as we're looking at these strategic priorities and my and and i saw data mentioned in a couple of them and so my my initial thought is that perhaps under each strategy there ought to be a statement about using data to identify problems and then to you know measure performance but As we discussed, that could be solved by having one statement under excellence in government about using data to identify the problems and then tracking the performance and outcomes on the other end of that. I know that there's one data statement on the safe and clean there's another data set statement on the existing government, but maybe they could be combined in one statement that would you know lead us to always want to kind of review the data to look at the problem up front and then you know once we decide on what the solutions are that we use data to track that and so maybe if we use that in kind of everything that we do we get better and help build more muscle in in the use of day.

Yeah, and if I may just elaborate for those council people who haven't had the detailed conversation the Mayor and I had. The specific statement we were thinking about maybe beefing up, if you will, is under Excellence in Government and it's EIG 4.6. It currently reads, use data and performance metrics to track progress, share results publicly, and refine strategies for greater impact. But what we were thinking, that really sounds more reactive than also proactive. And so we'll probably come back to you with a modified statement here, making it clear that we're going to use data and performance metrics to identify where we need to focus, then track progress, share results publicly, and refine strategies for greater impact. And make it also clear that although it's an excellence in government, it applies to all of the strategies. So that that's what I would consider a tweak but it's an important tweak to send this message that we want to send that we're going to that we are and will be an even stronger data driven culture.

Any other questions comments from council members. OK all right, thank you Brian before it to a final product I do want to say too, but I mean regarding the you know additional input that you've got from the younger generation and the fact that I think what I heard was that when we would want to reduce. A youth violence they say it prevent you about balance and I thought that's a major shift in the way we think about balance in our community is that we shouldn't accept any amount of that was a goal ought to be to have 0 about crimes in our community. You know how difficult that is to attain but yet if that's what we're striving for I think that makes us better so I'm glad that that that input from the younger people got us to tweak that particular one and really kind of focus on preventing all about us.

And since you brought up the youth mayor, if I may, just a little plug. And hopefully we'll get to recognize them towards the end of the summer. But just to show you that we really took to heart what council challenges to do with involving young people more in the development of the plan, but also ultimately the execution of the plan. We've worked this year with Hampton City Schools to have one of their summer business institutes be all around placemaking, which of course is one of the seven priorities. and you all know for the public who may or may not have heard mitchell silver he talked about this principle that comes out of the center for public project spaces called the power of 10 and how really great cities have 10 great destinations and within those great destinations they have at least 10 great activities and a lot of times the thinking that goes around that is driven by adults So we decided this summer to use one of the summer business institutes to engage roughly 40 young people who kicked off their work this week to think about placemaking and that power of 10 from the perspective of youth and young adults. And by the end of the summer, we'll be getting a report from them that will be more along the lines of some of it will feed into that strategic plan implementation group. But some of those more detailed strategies Councilwoman Mugler was asking about. But I'm really proud that the Hampton City Schools got really excited about our engagement with young people around the strategic plan and that they agreed to let them spend a summer project on helping us flesh out placemaking from the youth perspective. We all look really forward to their results. They're even gonna make a trip down to Raleigh and meet with Mr. Silver and see what Raleigh did to address these perspectives from the young people. So this is just a way of teasing up that you're absolutely right. We need to make sure we're involving young people at every stage of the game.

Thank you. I think a final presentation is the one we've been waiting for a drum roll everybody.

Never least we're pleased to have with us not chief Weidman today each July Council receives an update from the police chief on crime statistics. Both you know because this is about the time of year that They've gotten not only we had our data, of course, for last year, but other cities report to state and federal data sources. And we want to look comparatively. And it also gives us a good snapshot for how we're tracking this year, mid year. And so the chief is going to talk about a variety of those data points, but also what we're doing and where we're progressing. And so we look forward to the presentation each year. By all means, we hope this will be an interactive session between you and the chief. And just as a teaser, because you just mentioned about prevention versus responding, in August we get the report from the Office of Youth and Young Adult Opportunities, which is really focused on the prevention and intervention aspects of our strategy. And of course they and the police work really well together, but if we did both reports on the same day, we would be here all day. So today is Chief Weidman's turn, and next month you'll hear from Hugo Morrison and his team.

Good afternoon. Mayor, Vice Mayor, Members of Council, Madam City Attorney, Ms. Bunting, thank you for the appearance today. First and foremost, I'd like to thank my team from the Hampton Police Division's Intel Data and Analysis Team because they actually did the data mining for me to get the real statistics for me, and also the support of Ms. Angelique Sink and Ms. Amanda Fisher-Boyd to give some visualization to it to make sure I can, I guess, make it easier to digest for the public as they view the information that I'm presenting. you And typically what I do is what I like to do is rather than just exist in the current, I like to show the trends, the patterns, and where we were and where we are. And typically to get an accurate depiction of that, typically you use a couple years of time to make a comparison to see where we were and where we're headed, as well as any trends, anything that's consistently or apparent as an issue for us over time, whether that be a location, an individual, or a particular type of incident. And in this depiction, as you see, the comparison for the last year to date, and then I also collected five years of data. So you can see the direction that we're traveling in. And with that in itself, you can see for, say, violent crime, we're down 10.5% for the five-year mean. And then for property crime, we're up 1.1. But totally, our crime is up just 0.2% as it relates to the last five years. If you look back to last year, even in comparison, you'll see that the change from last year to this year of violent crime is down 12.6%. Property crime is down 8.9%. And overall, the total crime is down 9.1%. In a broader spectrum, again, you'll see additionally where we are with the violent crime and the property crimes. I broke those down into two different categories. Violent crime, of course, would be anything involving a crime against a person, a human. And so for our murder, negligent, manslaughter, homicide, if some people would call it that, you'll see the difference. We're down from 2025 to 2026, 50%. For sexual assault and rapes, we're up 11%, which I'll speak to in a moment. Robbery is down 32%. Aggravated assault is down 4.5%. Burglaries are down 3.2%. Larcenies, which would include larcenies, shoplifting, ABC stores, convenience stores, and things of that sort, are down 6.4%. And also our motor vehicles are down 33.3%. and then if you look at the numbers again you'll see over the course of five years what that five-year average is that's what our mean capture is you'll see the change over five years and where we are in relation to where we were five years ago again murder manslaughter down 58 percent sexual assault up 42 percent robbery down 26 percent The aggravated assault is down 9.6%. Burglary is down 23%. Larceny is up 5%, which I'll speak to. And motor vehicle theft is down 23%. so again speaking to our quarters we'll compare where we were last year as we are to this year and why is that relevant to you say quarters because predicated on what time of year it is whether school is in session whether universities colleges and other higher education institutions are available in close proximity to us what have you it affects the density of our population of course when you have density of population you have more occasion where the instances of crime can occur So in this quarter, second quarter, which is reflected.

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The computer has been locked up. keep going anyway then april 1st to june 29th making the comparison 25 to 26 again you'll see for the same time period last year uh in comparison we're at 50 for murder homicide again the sex assaults were up by 18 robberies are down 31 the aggravated assaults are down burglaries are up Larcenies are down by 13%, and motor vehicles are down by 21%. And this would be a good time, I guess, to speak to some of the places where we have demonstrated some increase. For example, for the rape sexual assault, historically, the numbers have gone up because Some of it comes from education to the public as it relates to say victims of sex assault, sex offenses. The numbers recently have gone up because we have a lot of historical cases. A historical case may be someone that was victimized as a juvenile and through awareness and through courage decide to report now during this time period that say several years ago they were a victim of an assault. subsequent to that we make those reports now and so the capture timeline is whenever the report is made even though it may have not been a recent offense and in those instances more times than not typically the offender we've identified as a family member of romantic interest or someone they've come in contact with via social media or dating application that gives us a higher probability of identification as well as prosecution in those instances as well By virtue of that, because some of these offenses may on occasion involve multiple victims by one offender within the same, say, family dynamic, the numbers are going to be higher. The clearance rate will be higher because we've identified the subject. But then for future offenses, it is less likely through the benefit of prosecution. The other area where we had an increase, which we'll move towards, is the larceny. Our larcenies went up, and we'll speak to it and its focus as to why that would have occurred, because we've identified the locations that are most prone, most problematic, and so we have some things in place to address that. So we'll go with the last three-year trends, and as you'll see, 2024 was a highlight year for us, whereas the numbers were the lowest that they've been in the past. 2025, we did have a spike as related to the violent crimes with the 10 homicides. But again, currently in 2026, we're back down to where we leveled off consistent to the highlight year of 2024. And the same remains the same through several other categories. As I spoke to previously with the sex offenses, that increased where you see there was an increase of three offenses this year compared to last year. And then for robberies, again, that violent crime category throughout is down. The aggravated assaults, which can be anything from an assault with a weapon to an assault that causes a severe bodily injury to use of a firearm also is down. as predicated by the numbers if you look. The change from last year murder homicide down 50. Councilman sorry I didn't see yes, yes, ma'am.

Thank you chief. I just want to make sure I understand. The numbers that you were born to. So if something if if someone will had a sexual assault. 2 years ago. And they didn't report it until this year. That's the number that we're looking at. Correct. Is that correct? Yes, ma'am. Okay, so it's the year that it's reported, not the year that the offense took place.

Correct. Otherwise, we would have to do the data retroactively. Okay. And so the reporting is exactly that, whenever the actual incident is, in fact, reported. And so there have been some instances where someone may have been victimized over several years, but it comes to us as one report as the date to which it was reported. And then subsequent to that, we have recently identified the pattern, whereas if someone moves, say, from Hampton to Newport News, same victim, same suspect, both Hampton and Newport News will collect that data. Although same victim, same suspect, it appears for statistics and for the data collection that there are multiple offenses in different localities, jurisdictions, but it could still be the same victim, same suspect. And in that predatory nature, it could also be the same offender may have multiple people in the same family to which they offend. And then that would be a different offense that we collect as well. Within the same family dynamic, if there are multiple victims, we'll end up with multiple reports.

Thank you.

Yes, ma'am. And then again, the robberies are down, aggravated assaults are down. So generally speaking, from last year, the violent crime is down over 12%. So we also capture, one of the focuses for the police division, of course, is violence involving firearms. So again, capturing the last three years so we can have a comparison of where we were and where we are and how successful are we in mitigating the problems that we may have seen in the past. As you can see, even as I previously mentioned, we're down 50% as it relates to murders or homicides, but also for fatal and non-fatal shootings we are down, whereas We have five this year compared to 18 last year. We have 22 that were non-fatal compared to 49 last year. And I think, again, to give credit to our efforts, not just in the police department, but generally speaking across the board, it's a relationship that we have with the youth and young adults. It's a relationship that we have with parks and recreation and leisure, whereas we find opportunities to engage the communities, to speak to the young people, to identify those that are in crisis or at risk of committing acts of violence or being victimized by acts of violence and subsequent to that, by engagement with that program. They get wraparound services to identify the needs, whether it be for mental health, whether it be for assistance with education, whether it be with substance abuse, employment, education, whatever that looks like. but it doesn't just involve that individual it involves the entire family because it's that family unit that is probably in need of services and by virtue of providing that people see options and opportunities and can make better choices about how they want to proceed through the community and through their choices with dealing with conflict and teaches them the skills for conflict resolution and with that this is a representation of that yes i'm sorry

Thank you, Chief. Is that what you were just addressing with the how, you know, whether or not you're the victim, whether or not you're the person who is going to be the perpetrator or the mental health services dealing with the families at the Operation Ceasefire?

The Operation Ceasefire is one of the programs. And so we haven't married ourself to one singular program. We basically make it unique to the needs of the individual. Also another program which has been very supportive with the Commonwealth Attorney's Office. He has the Operation Ceasefire program, but he also has a J-CAP for those of you young folks that are interested in maybe pursuing a career in the judicial system in some capacity. It gives them some engagement. It gives us an opportunity to engage with the young people again and have that resource referral if that's what you want to call it so giving them more options and having the realization that there are other options outside of their little network or their little community and that proves to be helpful because even by virtue of that you know if they're successful and they can reach out to others to give them the opportunity to be successful and know what programs are available and exist to support them

OK, because I know with the Operation Ceasefire, you all kind of come together with the different arms, with the courts. Yes, ma'am. You, the police department, Commonwealth's attorney's office, and other areas to look at specific individuals and how you can help them. And even with the progression of how they're doing and what their next steps may be, depending on what

areas there you know uh or decisions that they're making basically okay but i dare to say that our success is predicated not solely on what efforts the police department applies to issues that we've identified but just the collaboration citywide because of all the other departments we're able to engage with and and leverage the the options or the resources that they have to address any issues that we've identified whether that be through, you know, community engagement with parks, recreation, leisure, going into the neighborhoods and the communities that we've identified as maybe having an increase in activities that might be problematic down the road and actually hosting a community event within that community for one, so they have access to it because we're their president of the community. They don't have that problem of transportation to allow them to have other opportunities to know what other resources are available in the community whether it be rec league sports or some of the activities that are currently going on at the beaches and the parks to give them the summertime activities so they can make uh i guess better use of their time so it's and i've never personally experienced an occasion where i've reached out to another city department in support of something that was specifically or typically described as a police matter without receiving some support to mitigate the issue okay thank you yes ma'am And so you'll see the demographic for the age group for young people or young adults, whether it be by victim or suspect, that data reflects the efforts not only for the police department, the community, the city of Hampton, as well as youth and young adults. Prior or before, the numbers reflected a younger population of offenders and victims. And as you can see from the data itself, that that demographic has shifted to a more mature group. And so the assessment, or at least my assessment of that is, that is capturing the group that have aged out of programs or have already made a determination as to how they want to proceed with participating in criminal activity it was before we really had i guess uh perfected our efforts with that younger community so as you see the age groups have changed i think that's because now we're seeing the benefit of our efforts with that younger demographic and those more mature i won't say older a more mature group have i guess been involved in that activity for a longer period of time and subsequent to that they're maturing into uh criminal behavior which is of course detrimental to them And again, the pattern remains the same as it relates to our burglaries or property crimes or break-ins, however you want to term that. The two places where you'll see that increase, though, will be our larcenies. The larcenies, and I'll speak to why the larcenies typically have that increase. And if you look in the model, the ABC stores, because we broke the category down so we could be more specific and intentional about where we direct our efforts to mitigate the problems. We make different categories, and that's why we broke it down by charge description. So Larsonie of ABC Stores, that's one of our peak locations. And then you'll see Larsonie Shoplifting, that's another one that's in a peak. And I'll go into further detail about specifically where this is occurring and what we are doing to address those. So for our shoplifting, You'll see at the very top is the Target store, which is in the PTC. And when I say shoplifting, it's up. Any crime, of course, is a problem. Shoplifting is probably the most prolific because it's probably the easiest to get away with. It's probably more likely that someone that gets away with it on one occasion will go back and try to perpetrate that same crime again. After that, you'll see the food line right here on Mercury and Fox Hill area corridor, Walmart, and then the Walgreens. And so we've been able to be successful in trying to mitigate some of that and get those numbers back in. I won't say acceptable because any is not acceptable, but to have more control over it is working very closely with the team out at, say, Panessa Town Center, because this is the town center. Not only do they have security, they also have a loss prevention team at the Target store. We've also become members of the Mid-Atlantic Organizational Retail Crimes Group. So we have the resources not only of Hampton, but also the Mid-Atlantic region. The problem there, not the problem, the reason why is because These people are not just unique to Hampton. So if they're in Hampton, Newport News, or anywhere else in the region, we can share information. We can identify suspects that may be in another location and have our personnel be on the lookout for them should they come to our area. As it relates to the food line, the food line management team has been amazing. And this is what we will see happen as we become more proactive and more aggressive in our attempts to identify the problem and then hold those accountable for the problem is the numbers will go up because we're more conscious and we're making a better effort to identify the crimes that occur and those people that perpetrate those crimes. And so when they come on board, for example, if they have a more aggressive management team or more aggressive loss prevention team, they're more successful at identifying crime occurring and making those apprehensions. So we will see a spike before we see it go down. I think that's the trend that we're in right now as it relates to our last season shopliftings in those areas. The next problematic location would be our Virginia ABC stores. And that is not unique to Hampton. This is one of those items that we've had extensive conversations with the Virginia ABC Enforcement Branch. They've been working with us to enhance their camera capacity, also the employee awareness, employee reporting, as well as doing some product protection, whereas the high dollar items are less available, less accessible to those that might want to commit those larcenies. And again, similarly, by working with the police department, head of police division, and the officers that are assigned to the districts by which those locations are, we've been able to be preventative, proactive, as well as effective at apprehending those perpetrators. Problem there is a lot of those larcenies are motivated by that substance abuse or that addiction. And subsequent to that, we're not so much a deterrent as much as we would want to be because the desire is overwhelming in those instances. again one of the heavy focuses as i mentioned previously is our fire firearm violence suppression detail uh we've been working with the virginia state police the virginia state police have been most supportive of city of hampton and hampton police division in that they have given us and for lack of better terms essentially assigned additional troopers to the city of hampton to support our violent crime enforcement our firearms suppression And by virtue of that, what we do, we use a two-prong approach. Not only do we have the uniformed officers that are on patrol, and we also use intelligence and data collection to do that. so our real-time information center our um our gang unit our surveillance unit are instrumental in identifying specifically the people that we've already identified through patterns of life that are most problematic most likely to commit a crime or who have committed a crime before in the city and most likely to re-offend so with that it's a targeted approach whereas we do the surveillance we do the intelligence collection and we do data intelligence driven policing for those target individuals. Subsequent to that, we're usually in the places that we expect them to be. And if they commit an offense, then we're in the right place at the right time to effectively respond to that. Or by our mere presence and tenacity in those spaces, they're less likely to occupy those spaces. And as a result, just year to date, this is not a capture of the entire year, but there have subsequently been 74 felony arrests, 15 misdemeanor arrests, recovered 23 firearms, but those numbers go up daily. Of the 128 traffic stops, those traffic stops are specifically for the target people that we know are problematic in our community. And then the other items, which would be field interviews, summonses, and search warrants. And again, our real-time information center, which has been just so essential for us to do data intelligence-led policing. Rather than feeling the need to do this broadcast of enforcement effort, we know who the target individuals are. We know the patterns of life of the target individuals, where they frequent, what the crimes are that they are most likely to commit, also the people that they're most likely to victimize, and then strategically place ourselves in those places. The benefit of that as well is we can use covert uh cameras data collection human sources to collect additional information to make our efforts more productive currently in the real-time information center we have 685 cameras also included in that are the license plate readers We have coverage in, I dare to say, the majority of the places within the city where there's gonna be a density of population. We also deploy those cameras when we have some areas that we know we're going to have dense populations of people, special events, or a location that has been problematic in the past. With that being said, we have live data integration. So dozens of feeds, we will deploy drones which actually feed information. Our body-worn cameras are also attached to that. And then, which I'll speak to in a little bit, gunshot detection system, which we are moving forward with. Again, the most important component of that is our partnership with the community, the residents, as well as our business partners. And so we have a faster response because it improves the information that is going to the officers. We can be proactive rather than reactive. We get information that is time sensitive, and we can action that information as soon as possible to make sure, first and foremost, we mitigate and prevent rather than respond to an incident. So the new program we're moving forward with now, currently I don't want to give a timeline, but it's already in motion, is drone as a first responder. And essentially, if we get an emergency dispatch, we can use our drone pilots to then deploy a drone, which is at a stationary mounted location. We've put some places strategically throughout the city where we have the most coverage, the fastest response time, so we can have those units in place. Benefit there being is, first and foremost, any traffic that might exist, any obstacles that might exist. We have distance and safety for both citizens and officers. We can get information real time and we can get information deployed to the officers responding as fast as possible. We can make an assessment of the need for additional officers, emergency equipment, or support services. improve safety we can assess any potential hazards whether that be say a hazmat scenario we can use it for emergency management purposes example if there's flooded areas if there are instructions for access to emergency vehicles if we have a natural disaster we need to make an assessment if the fire department has a need for a drone for say for example Infrared technology or heat sensing or rescue, we can also use that. Lost children or adults, it's also going to help us in that effort. The advanced optical zoom and thermal imaging is highly effective in, again, locating suspects, having access to low-light environments or access to areas that we would not be able to readily deploy officers prior to because of some sort of obstacle, obstruction, or traffic condition. And we currently are projecting full launch stations. Again, we are in the process of finishing the actual infrastructure needs for that. We're collaborating with the Hampton Fire and Rescue to provide additional public safety responses. Public Works, Mike Bowie, he's been instrumental in assisting us in getting the infrastructure established. And the other portion, and I have to give kudos because you're looking at me, Vice Mayor, because I know we had a conversation about the Exxon and that platform and what it would do for us. And a lot of the things that I've previously mentioned come by way of us expanding with the support of City Council and Ms. Bunting of expanding the platform, the Exxon platform, to give us all these additional technology tools to enhance our ability to respond and collect information and be responsive and collect evidence if we're doing an investigation. But the other thing, and I know Mayor had mentioned something before about a gunshot detection platform. And so with this new technology that's available through Exxon, we have the detect gunfire program, which is called Flock Raven. essentially what that will do with the camera systems that we have and the additional uh software and hardware that we are acquiring when there is a gunshot not only will we have the benefit of triangulating where it came from but because we have over 600 cameras throughout the city those cameras will automatically feed into the location to which that sound came from and then real time provide us information so we can readily identify if there are any victims are there any suspects any vehicles and the surrounding can conditions attributed to that gunshot fire. We'll be able to detect by virtue of that software any street takeovers. We can detect those early, and you say, how would you do that? Because we can make the adjustments to capture radios, mufflers, screeching tires, and things of that sort, which would be indicators of such an event. and then again we can not only capture visually that information with the cameras that are going to be tuned into those locations but also then capture the people responsible by virtue of their tagged informations get early information about where that location is or where they may be going and then properly deploy the resources to mitigate the issue And so recently it's been real popular in the news, not only for Hampton, but I'll just say the East Coast, generally speaking. Pop-ups, takeovers, and car meets. And so the issue there is the hardest thing is catching up to the information. So the benefit we have with our intelligence unit is we're constantly searching social media for anything that suggests that there's going to be a large gathering of people. Not so much that large gatherings of people are problematic, but some of the nefarious actors that show up would be problematic. Being proactive, we need to be in the space when those things happen or at least have the information about that. And so our intel unit, when they get that information, we do a crime awareness bulletin. We send that out to operations or to any specialized unit that needs to have that information so we can be in that space to make sure, again, we make sure there's a safe environment for all that either attend, visit, or occupy those spaces. I can't remember exactly when it was, a couple months ago. I know pursuant to Ms. Bunting's assistance, she coordinated the actual effort with Mr. Ed Reed. And so we met with Virginia Beach Police Department, city manager, police chief, and some of their personnel to have that conversation about pop-ups and large gatherings at the beach and how we need to better respond to that, what support systems are available for us to do that. There was some discussion about some legislative efforts that I know are moving forward. I don't know exactly where we are in the stages of that just yet. And we spoke about challenges, not only general as it relates to the oceanfront spaces, beaches, those resort communities, but also how it impacts the... the adjacent communities. Because example, if Virginia Beach shuts it all down, they're going to press into Hampton. So we have to be responsive to that. We have to have a legitimate plan that's going to be able to respond positively to that. So there was some conversations. Again, there's a legislative proposal that's supposed to assist us with that and give us better tools, more tools to respond when those occasions happen. What we've done internally, we do our data mining, but we also now through the data mining, so the information is available to all that need know, we have event notification tracking. And so essentially if someone has a special event, if we get information about a pop-up or a party or something of that sort, whether it be at a beach, a park, Peninsula Town Center, Fort Monroe, we collect that data, we provide that information to all of our internal resources. And that looks similar to this. This is live, it's real time, so should an event come to our awareness, say within the hour, it would be available on this interactive real time sheet. What it does is, we're not able to do it right here, but should you go over one of the icons, it will give you as much information as we can tangibly use at that time about the event planner, what the expectation for attendance is, whether it's a sanctioned event or not. an estimation of what resources we might need to deploy to that to help, again, make sure it's a safe event. And this, again, I say is real-time because some things come up without announcement. The pop-ups are usually done by social media, so it's in real-time and fast. But through the constant efforts of the intelligence unit that we have, and I'm constantly data mining for those things using keywords, key locations, we're able to keep this up-to-date, and that's proven to be a very effective tool for us as well. Speaking specifically to Buckrow, as you all know, we have the Hampton Show Line Operations Station. I'd like to read through you all's picture in there to give you a plug. That was, like, good. And so what we do there is waterfront safety. We provide resources, information about resources, provide first aid, assist with missing children should they get separated from an adult or guardian. And speak to the employment opportunities. And most recently, of course, when the season comes around, post-graduation, the opportunity to do internships. Another unique, I won't say unique, another thing we have done recently that is different than the way we've operated in the past, partnered with Parks and Rec Leisure, coordinated with Mr. Darryl Crittenden, and we had a conversation about how can we more effectively be present in our beaches and our parks. because essentially that tends to be in a location where we need to have presence and have the ability to take enforcement action should someone not just voluntarily comply. And so what the police department has done is absorb the park rangers, but by virtue of doing that, we just had to enhance that effort. And so now all the park rangers come through the police department's criminal justice academy. Upon graduation and completion of a field training program, they have the same authority and powers of any law enforcement officer where they would not have had that in the past. by virtue of that not only could they take the appropriate enforcement action in those locations prior to waiting for a regular hampton police officer to arrive should there be some spillover in other parts of the city because they are auxiliary officers with the police department as well they can take action throughout the city if the need arises so it's a force multiplier for us it gives them more authority in those places the beaches and the parks where they otherwise may not have been able to take enforcement action for other criminal offenses that would have occurred in those spaces And it allows the operations officers to focus on other areas throughout the city where the things that we tend to most frequently do or we're required to do, we can exist in those spaces without the distraction to another location. It also stands to give us the benefit of having officers to support us when we do other city events, because again, they're sworn, they can help work in those assignments to support us in those spaces. So then again, we don't take as many resources from the operational officers that are in the cities, communities and neighborhoods doing what they do best in those spaces. And so the inquiry would be about recruiting and retention because we're always working hard to make sure we get our numbers up in that space. And so I celebrate the fact that we had the most retention and the least separation than we've had in the last five years. I'll just give you a quick little breakdown for reasons, and I've always preached that people will not leave for money. That is not the case. More times than not, again, demonstrated by the graph, it's a career choice. Everyone's not suited to do this work. The attrition, whatever the case may be. And so I wanted to demonstrate that our efforts in recruiting are successful, whereas we now implement a biweekly recruiting and retention meeting. So every two weeks, we sit down. I have my command staff before me. I have my recruiters, my personnel staff, members from human resources. And we continually manufacture strategies that are going to be most effective for recruiting and retention because they both have to come together. We can get them in the door, but our effort is equally motivated to keep people here. uh we speak about the employee wellness and appreciation and what that looks like so we host internal external opportunities for employees to network have some benefit of socialization and and partnerships bridge gaps recruiting strategies and opportunities again we spoke to that and our cadet program and our partnership too with hampton hampton city schools alps program where we use the connect program as a pipeline for an officers and that's become so very successful for us uh reason being a great majority of the officers either through interaction with young people as school resource officers or in the community it affords them the opportunity to also recruit and with that being said we have a great many of the members of the community young people that look to law enforcement as an opportunity for them And I advocate because a young person that may not want to go into the armed services or may not go to college, this still is a great opportunity to find employment. And with that, they come in, they get an introduction to the police department, they get an introduction to law enforcement in the city of Hampton, the city's government. They don't have to make a choice to be a law enforcement officer, but it gives them exposure to the other opportunities that exist within the city. been very successful and a great majority of those young people end up staying long enough to reach the age of majority whereas they could be accepted as a sworn police officer and that's proven to be very successful for us and i'll entertain your questions vice mayor brown

chief you got me first uh the most thorough report i've heard in a long time on crime and stats and strategy and the innovative new things that you're doing i guarantee you your drones can't do what happened on saturday candy no sir okay i don't think so yeah that you love for sure was awesome and then do with my question uh the and i think i'm glad to hear you say about buckrell because that's been a concern um in the summertime is coming. And people for some reason get a little more rambunctious in the summertime. And and I hear that we are exploring resources in various areas of the city, particularly the cameras and real-time cameras. What are we doing with the mobile unit? Are we taking that around the various areas where you know that crime is pretty prevalent?

I THINK I MENTIONED BEFORE, IT'S HARD FOR ME TO SAY THERE'S SPECIFIC AREAS. THERE ARE SOME OCCASIONS WHERE IT'S, AS YOU COMPARE IT TO THE REST OF THE CITY, MAYBE WHAT WE CALL A HOT SPOT. WE'RE SAYING MAYBE A COUPLE INSTANCES THAT BRING AN AREA TO OUR ATTENTION. THE DIFFICULTY IN JUST CONCENTRATING ON, SAY, NEIGHBORHOODS OR COMMUNITIES ARE PEOPLE ARE FLUID, THEY'RE IN VEHICLES, THEY MAY NOT BE FROM OUR CITY, SO I DON'T ATTRIBUTE AN ISSUE WITH A SPECIFIC NEIGHBORHOOD OR COMMUNITY AS MUCH AS AN INDIVIDUAL. And so the benefit of the intelligent light policing is rather than use this broad general approach, we identify the people that are most problematic. And then we're wherever they are. And it could be that they're in Newport News, but because we have the Virginia State Police, if they leave Hampton, they think they can go to Newport News and we can cross that line and we can address it accordingly. We have a great relationship with Newport News Police Department and Chief Drew. Communication lines are always open. And so we're able to, again, follow them wherever they exist and get the support of those people to help mitigate it. So if they don't want to come to Hampton or stay in Hampton with Nefarious intentions, that's all well and good. But when they do, we'll be in the right place to deal with it. And for, I'm sorry, to one other reference, Buckrow, you mentioned Buckrow, is the thing that we do for Buckrow also that proves to be effective for us is because a lot of these people are young folk, we use our school resource officers because they're most familiar with the young people. And so we deploy the school resource officers when it's off season to Buckrow because they can readily identify those people that might be problematic. Nine times out of ten, Communication is the most effective tool because they know the officer knows them and maybe a family member. They know they'll see them again when the school year returns. And so a great majority of the time, that in itself is an effective tool to get ahead of any problems that might occur.

No, I know in times past will you be doing it again because we're 6 out of the mayor also did one a PSA PSA is a particular about people are not locking the vehicles and even if it's leaving a weapon in the car.

Yeah, we do for that again that's the most problematic occasion that's the way by which most firearms are stolen and and make it to the street and used in crime and and we bang our heads on the wall with that one because as much as we message it unfortunately there are a lot of people that don't heed to that safety warning and so it is the easiest way for again people that should not be in possession of firearms to possess firearms but we will follow up especially during the warmer season season to uh address that

And it's something that I noticed that I don't we do it anymore it may not be the best practices. Do we still do checkpoints with that remember

as a rambunctious young man driving several times okay yeah we're not allowed to do those in registration and again that i understand why it's inconvenient for a lot of people whereas fortunately because again the technology is allowed to just be very specific and so with that for example if they're monitoring the cameras and they see somebody looks like they might be having an issue controlling their vehicle Via that we could send an officer very specifically to locate identify the driving behavior of that person and then deal with that person individually opposed to whoever passes a checkpoint.

Now miss this point, my final question you do you say that Park Rangers, I know they have that you know they're sworn officers that have arresting powers. They do now. Okay, so that you can you look at that okay great.

Yeah prior to the Park Rangers were not They're more along the lines of, say, constables in the areas to which they have the authority for the ordinances or violations that existed in the spaces that they occupy. And now they take a city of Hampton Oath and with that they can do law enforcement activities throughout the city that prove most helpful we had a park ranger recently graduated that was in the area of a violent act that was the first responder just because they were commuting to another location and was able to render life saving assistance. Yes, Sir.

Thank you, sir. Councilman Bowman.

Chief Weidman, I want to say this is a very impressive report. It was very well put together. And I just want to commend you and your team because it takes your whole team to get numbers like this. I also want to commend you because every time I look on TV or on Facebook, I see that your entire team, they are engaged in contests. going to events and just the different commercials and I think the camaraderie sends a strong message that your team, they are 100% committed to doing the job. With that said, on one of the shoplifting, so shoplifting has increased. Do you feel that the law or is it a law that the retailers cannot apprehend, hold, or detain a shoplifter?

Typically, they have loss prevention personnel or security that they hire for that purpose. It depends on the policy of the particular businesses as to whether or not they can pursue or detain. That's going to be predicated on company policy. More times than not, in the interest of safety of the employee, they'd rather someone steal something and there's no conflict or injury to the employee and they'll report it. If we're fortunate, we're able to be able to follow up and make apprehensions.

I said that because I know two instances where they fired employees and store managers. I went to a store the other day and a guy was walking out with a 70 inch TV and he looked at me and said, you want one?

so okay just thank you for that yes sir councilwoman campbell thank you mr mayor great job on the report sir um i did want to put a plug in for the bid officers as i go to the various meetings and they're in there and they're engaged with the the retailers and the citizens all of them have expressed appreciation and the effectiveness of that so i would just encourage continuing that program and kudos for that

Yes, ma'am. Councilman Mugler.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Chief, for this very thorough report. I have to say, thinking back to your first report, which was, in my recollection, super brief, this is incredible. This is a really, really...

I follow instructions well.

Well, that's always a good trait, but I don't know who instructed you, but this is really terrific material, and I'm really proud of the five-year average change and happy to see we're moving in the right direction with those things. I have to say, as a woman on this council, the the rape and sexual assault numbers are concerning to me and i know that you talked about the fact that people are reporting issues that occurred previously currently so are you saying that specifically is what affected this particular number of that just happens

um that's consistent in that type of offense right whereas there may be some years where the abuse is carried out over a significant amount of time and then at some point either someone moves out of the home or they're separated from the offender or they're no longer at risk they'll start to report or they'll report to us or someone else they may have information regarding that incident might report and so as it relates to say Comparatively speaking, we were just having one of our meetings just recently. We only know of one instance where the offender was a stranger.

Wow, that's interesting. Okay. But anyway, just an area that is, you know, it is concerning to me. I don't know, you know, your work and how we can make any changes in that regard. I don't know because... as you've mentioned, so many of them are sort of a domestic scenario.

And I say credit, not to minimize the type of offenses that they are, but I think the general public awareness and the support and responsiveness to those offenses have given people the empowerment to come forward and make those reports. And by virtue of that, as it would compare to previously where people were either shamed or not supported or didn't feel like the system, the justice system, would properly manage their complaint, i think that has given us more people coming forward bringing it to our attention and i much rather have those people identified so we can properly deal with them than to i guess hope that they would not and remain in silence sure so it's a move in the right direction the numbers are up but by identifying the offenders i'm pretty confident that the numbers will come back significantly because those that offend typically re-offend

Thank you. Sure. At one point in my career, I worked in higher education, and I do know that on college and university campuses, there is a high incidence of sexual assault and rape that occurs. And I don't know if you have any statistics on that, but does that have any bearing on our numbers as a community?

I would have to do a deep dive, and the only reason I say that is because a lot of the statistics are related to someone that one is known to the other. I don't want to speculate, but I think maybe in that setting, there might be some influence of narcotics and alcohol, which I'm not opposed to do the deep dive and actually do that type of data extraction and have a more accurate response for it.

I just think it's a fair analysis just to see if that affects our community versus another community that doesn't have higher ed in their city limits.

And we could target our awareness messaging.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I'm really excited about the drone piece and all the camera work that's on the way and in place already and so forth. So I'm interested to see what kind of impact that might have for us. I think it could only be positive. you know all the all the specifics that you've told us about it certainly makes good sense so I don't know what it's cost us but it sounds like a good expenditure absolutely yeah okay thank you so much ma'am other questions or comments all right Chief very thorough report today and I look forward to uh looking at uh continuing

Improvement in our ability to reduce crime to prevent crime in our community. So thank all you. Many women for what they're doing because they're all doing a great job to go fixer. Our last presentation for the afternoon. Are they any regional issues. Um, are there any items for new business? All right. With that, I'll ask the clerk to read the motion required for closed session.

The motion required is to convene a closed session pursuant to Virginia Code Section 2.2-3711A8 to consult with legal counsel regarding legal issues associated with special assessments, service districts, and grant funding, and recommended amendments to the zoning ordinance for state code compliance.

The motion second move up. Approval of them. The motion is stated by the clerk second.

It's called a role please.

Councilman Bowman all right vice mayor Brown. Councilwoman Campbell I can swim in the air be I'm sorry. Councilwoman Harper I have to women, but we're not here great.

I so we will convene in closed session at 3.15 in the loss in conference room following the closed session Council will reconvene the open meeting in the same location in order to certify the closed session and then proceed to adjourn the meeting so with that. So you know awesome that 3.15.