City Council Legislative Session - workshop

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

Present. And we have several presentations on the agenda this afternoon. First is city council budget presentation or update. So, I'll turn it over to city manager to introduce them.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and council members. As you know, we're entering into the actual work sessions after we've released a manager's recommended budget and by tradition we have with us the school board and superintendent and his team to present their school board budget. I'm sure they'll tell you a little bit more about this as they do it but lest us all remember we don't have a state budget right now. So I I think they probably expect this will change a bit once they get a final state budget based upon what the House and Senate introduced. But today they're going to present what they responsibly had to look at which was the introduced budget. So real quickly before they present that, I want to acknowledge this I think we have everyone. Is that right? I've got to count from almost everyone. We don't have Mr.

Kilgore but six of the seven school board members with us. Chair Richard Mason is I want to acknowledge Vice Chair Stephanie Jackson Afonga, Doctor. Tina Banks Gray, Ann Stevens Cherry, Reverend Woodhouse as the other school board members in attendance, and of course Doctor. Haynes, Congiano, and Brittany. Sorry, Branch. I wanted to call you Abbott because we have a Brittany Abbott. I had to thank Brittany Branch, their Chief Financial Officer, will be part of the presentation. But Doctor. Mason is going to

kick it off.

All right. Doctor. Mason, welcome.

Good afternoon, Mayor Gray, Vice Mayor Brown, and members of City Council, and my city manager. We appreciate the opportunity to be with you all today to present our budget. The Virginia School Board Association, or we refer to it as VSBA, they outlined the three core responsibilities of our school board, and that is hiring and evaluating the superintendent, establishing policy, and adopting and overseeing the budget. And we approach each of these duties with great care and accountability. Now the budget that's gonna be before you today certainly reflects deliberate planning and a strong commitment of fiscal responsibility.

It is designed to support our students while honoring the trust placed in us as stewards of public funds. My Mary has already introduced my colleagues on the school board, but I also want to acknowledge, mister Jason Samuels and mister Joe Kilgore. They're not able to be here with us today because of some previous work commitments that they had to, attend to, but they were certainly a part of the planning and and the work that has gone into this.

My official apologies for miscounting. There were only five, and I did leave off Jason Samuels. They've thank you for catching my mistake.

It's alright. If you wanna miscount and add about 2 more million dollars into that budget, we'll we'll take that miscount.

That expensive of a mistake. Miscount too.

Well, Hampton City Schools certainly remains grounded in in its mission to partner with our community to ensure academic success for every child every day, whatever it takes. In alignment with this mission, the school board provided clear direction to the superintendent to guide the development of this budget. Our priorities for the fiscal year twenty twenty seven budget are maximize maximizing student learning outcomes, recruiting, supporting, and retaining high quality staff, and maintaining safe and supportive school environments. We also sought meaningful input from our community. The top areas identified from the community were competitive employee compensation, strengthening school safety, and expanding tutoring and academic support.

This budget certainly reflects our strategic priorities and the voices of our community in which it is balanced, focused, and aligned with shared goals. And so before turning things over to the superintendent and his team, I want to take a moment on behalf of the school board to thank the city council for your continued collaboration and partnership. And you certainly know I brag on this relationship and what we do here in the city of Hampton because we certainly don't take it for granted when I hear some of the challenges that our other school boards face in their communities. We are truly blessed to have this working relationship. So your support truly has made a measurable impact.

With Hampton City Schools, we continue to show strong results with every school fully accredited for the twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five school year with the highest designation possible. We also celebrate the class of 2025, which achieved an on time graduation rate of ninety eight point eight eight percent, the highest that this division has ever seen in history, along with our lowest dropout rate of point zero two percent. Thank you for your ongoing commitment to our students, staff, and the broader Hampton community. And at this time, I'm going to introduce our superintendent, doctor Raymond Hayes.

Good afternoon, mayor Gray, vice mayor Brown, members of the council and city manager Bunting. It's a pleasure to be with you today to present Hampton City Schools fiscal twenty twenty seven budget. Before we begin, I would like to acknowledge assistant city manager Brian DiPofio and express our appreciation for the time, guidance, and collaboration he provides throughout the development of this budget. I also want to recognize the entire school board for their leadership and active engagement during the process. The board's priorities along with the valuable input we received from the community has been central in shaping our recommendations.

As you know, we are still waiting final action on the state budget in Richmond. And in the interim, we are prepared to share key elements of our budget this afternoon, many of which were introduced during the two by two budget discussions held earlier this year. You will see that this proposal maintains a strong focus on recruiting and retaining high quality staff through competitive compensation and benefits. We also remain committed to ensuring safe, supportive learning environments and advancing student achievement even as we plan for the expiration of certain grant funded positions and resources. I would also like to extend our sincere thanks to city manager Bunting and the city council for your continued partnership and support.

Our shared commitment to the one community, one transformation mantra continues to guide this work, and we value the strong collaborative relationship between the city and the school division. That partnership is evident in the progress we've made together, from the completion of capital improvement projects highlighted during the January facilities tour and presentation to city council, to the sustained investment in teacher compensation over the past seven years. For example, where Hampton once trailed surrounding school divisions in teacher pay, we have now become competitive and in many cases, a leader across multiple teacher experience levels for the twenty five, twenty six school year. At this time, I would like to event invite, I'm sorry, missus Brittany Branch, our chief financial officer, to come forward and walk us through the details of fiscal year twenty twenty seven school budget. Following the presentations, we will entertain any questions you may have.

Thank you, doctor Haynes. Good afternoon, mayor Gray, vice mayor Brown, members of city council, city manager Monting. It's my pleasure to be here today to provide the details of the Hampton City Schools fiscal year twenty twenty seven budget. This budget really embodies our commitment to our teachers, our staff, and our students, which ultimately impacts our community. So during this presentation, you will hear that it's recommended and approved by our school board to provide a 3% compensation increase to employees, and that's with no increase to employee health care premiums.

This budget also includes targeted compensation adjustments to our teacher salary scale. Additionally, we strategically repurpose savings from changes in retirement costs, and we prioritize sustaining positions and resources that are currently grant funded based on those grants scheduled to end at the June this school year. So when developing the school board's budget, this is a process that's done over ten months, and it really starts back in August with planning. During this time, we actually put together and draft a budget development manual, and this development manual is what we provide to our departments and schools to tell them how they are to submit requests and to remind them to make sure those requests align with our strategic plan. We also take time to look at our actual results from last school year and see what impact that would have not only in what we budget for, but how we budget.

In October, we kick off our data collection phase. That's when departments are actually submitting requests. We look at enrollments for projection, and we start looking at initial revenue estimates with the largest being the release of the governor's budget, which typically happens in December. In January, we do our budget committee meetings. Our assistant city manager, Brian DeProfio, serves on that committee with us, and we look at our revenue projections in each one of the budget requests.

And for the presentation today, that really moves us into the approvals phase with the final phase being closed out by the June. So one of the most important parts of development process is to hear from our school board, and the school board identified the following priorities for next school year. The academies of Hampton, student achievement, compensation, recruitment, retention, school safety, and mental wellness. And as doctor Mason shared, our community again was able to provide us feedback, and their top three priorities were competitive compensation, safety, and tutoring and remediation. So following our budget development process and making sure we align the budget with the school board's priorities and the community's feedback, this was the basis for Hampton City Schools' total estimated budget of $372,000,000 for next school year.

Let's take a look at the projected revenue by each fund. Starting with fund 50, the school operating fund, we are projected to have revenues of $328,000,000. This is an increase of 15,000,000 from the current year. This additional revenue was driven by one governor Youngkin's budget because that is currently the budget we have the most detailed information from the Virginia Department of Education on at this point. Also includes estimate for the local contribution, and we also made some adjustments to our other revenue sources just based on actual results from fiscal year twenty twenty five.

Looking at food and nutrition services fund 51, we are projecting a budget of about $17,400,000. This is pretty stable with what we projected for this school year, with a slight increase for donated food items, the revenue for from the USDA. Our fund 60 reimbursable projects, this is typically our grant fund. We are projected to have revenues of 25,000,000, and you will see that we are projecting a decrease in revenue, but that is directly related to the scheduled end of our all in state grant and also one of our school security officer grants. Additionally, within Fund 60, we have recommended and the school board approved for us to move a large portion of our operating expenses for the television station or CPEG as we refer to it to the school operating fund, and that portion does not have a budgetary impact.

As we look at fund 65 rental income, projected revenue was 152,000, almost 153,000 next school year, and that budget is always based on our current rental agreements. Fund 93 school activity funds. This mirrors activity that happens within individual schools. For example, fundraising activities for student clubs, and we're projecting 1,100,000. For fund 95, our last fund, this is our business enterprise, the Hampton City Schools instructional resource toolkit.

We are projecting revenue of $660,000 next school year. The investment from the city council, or as we refer to it, the local contribution or local revenue, it is accounted for within school school operating fund or fund 50. So the remainder of this presentation will really focus on fund 50. So again, we are projecting $328,000,000, and again, this is an increase of 15,000,000 for next school year. So starting with our largest revenue source for the school operating fund, our state revenues are projected to be 218,300,000.

This is an increase of about 12,500,000. As you all know, the state develops its budget on a two year basis, so fiscal year twenty twenty seven is the first year of the new state biennium budget. There are two main drivers for school divisions as it relates to state revenue. One being the local composite index or LCI and the other being the March 31 average daily membership. Our local composite index, this is a calculation that the state utilizes.

This determines how much a city or county is required to fund the education cost under the standards of quality. And the standards of quality are just the minimum education requirements that all school divisions have to follow within Virginia. Our LCI for next school year is calculated to be 25.25%. When we look at our average daily membership projection, this is the number of students not only enrolled in school, but also attending school from the start of the school day through the last day in the month of March. We are projecting our average daily membership to be 18,432.

That is an increase of 79 students compared to where we are currently budgeted for this school year. As we move to the local support, our second largest funding source, again, this is based on the funding formula that is shared with the school division, 61.83% of Pacific revenue taxes. Through collaboration with the city finance department, we are showing today an estimated contribution of $102,000,000, but we do use the term estimated because we know that that is still subject to city council approval. For our federal funds, this would not include any grant related awards, but our federal funds are projected to be over $700,000 for our school operating fund, and we received those funds from two programs, the Federal Impact Aid and also the Junior Reserve Officers training corpse. We also have other revenue, and that represents about $7,100,000 of the projected revenue for next school year.

Our largest revenue source being the funds generated by our employee pharmacy, which is expected to be $3,200,000 next school year. All of the revenue that we receive within the school division, we are required by law to then categorize those dollars by expenditure classifications. And as you can see on the slide, instruction represents our largest expenditure classification, and that's about 67% of the budget. We're further required to then take those dollars and then determine what expenditure objects those dollars relate to, and salaries and fringe benefits represents about 79% of our budget. Because our core business is teaching and learning, we do have a strong focus on not only attaining exceptional staff, but also retaining.

So competitive compensation, as you heard, was a priority of our school board, but also it did come up in the results from our community. So based on that, the school board did approve us to have a 3% raise effective July 1, and that has a total cost of about $6,400,000 to the school operating fund. In addition to the 3% raise, we also looked at direct support using the local contribution to budget and invest $1,900,000 directly into our teacher salary scale. With this investment, that also includes our starting teacher pay, so a new teacher into the school division would have a salary if approved of 58,500. And as Doctor Haynes stated, you know, we have become more competitive in some areas, so we are continuing to make sure that we are a leader among the Peninsula, and much of that focus has been our bachelor salary scale.

But with this investment, we have started the process. We call it the next step of continuing our competitive compensation for teachers. It's looking at teachers who are on the master's degree and above teacher salary scales. And just a point of reference, we have over 50% of our current teaching staff that have a master's degree or higher. So looking at other compensation and fringe benefit highlights, we did also have approved in this budget by our school board reclassifications and compensation adjustments for select positions, and this again is in addition to three percent raise.

And this figure also includes adding a new supplement that will provide new teachers to the school division with pay for attending the new teacher orientation in the month of August. Additionally, when we looked at our health care costs, we are expected to see an increase of about 7.5% for next school year, and that translated into an additional investment of $1,300,000 for our school operating fund, and we also are projecting an increase to our contribution to the hers program. Taking a look at changes in staffing, school board approved overall addition of 43 positions. However, it's important to note that of that 43, only three are actually new positions or would be new positions to the school division. One being a school security officer for the Bethel High Science Wing, and also two new dual language immersion teachers.

The remaining 40 positions are currently funded within Fund 60 and are accounted for using grant funds or other Fund 60 programs, but due to mostly those two grants that I mentioned at the ending, we had to make decisions on what essential positions and resources we felt needed to be incorporated into our fund 50 operating budget. Within this budget, we also were able to repurpose dollars, about $5,000,000, with 4,200,000 coming from changes in the Virginia retirement system contribution requirements. And then also, we had a little over 800,000 attrition dollars due to salary and benefit changes. Some other some other highlights of the school operating fund. Our pharmacy and wellness center, it costs us about $4,100,000 to run that on an annual basis.

We have about $1,500,000. This is just non payroll dollars that directly support our academies of Hampton. We also have English and language arts instructional resources that are added into this budget, and these were previously funded within our fund 60 grant as well, but those directly support our students. We're looking to also continue to invest $300,000 for welding and electrical certification program for our students, Continue our partnership with the Community Service Board. We also have approved in this budget by the school board to commit an additional $150,000 to support students with disabilities through our partnership with the Department of Agent and Rehabilitation Services.

This budget continues to include debt service payments for our Pre K eight schools and the Kecoughtan High Science wing. And then our last item on this slide, excuse me, slide that's important to notate, we do have about $3,100,000 set aside for one time costs related to facility upgrades, mainly within our elementary schools. But we do also have within this figure amounts to help address a partnered facility upgrade for our school administration building with the city as well. So as I come to the end of the presentation, just some next steps. We will continue to monitor the final action of the state budget, so we know that there will be changes.

So we'll make sure to assess those impacts and submit revised numbers to not only the school board to but to City Council as well. And just for the viewing audience, there is a link within this presentation that takes you directly to the Hampton City Schools budget information page. So this is where the community can stay abreast on any changes with the school systems budget. So that completes the presentation of the fiscal year twenty twenty seven approved budget, and again, I just want to echo what Doctor Mason and Doctor Haynes have already shared. I do appreciate the collaboration and the partnership that we do have, so I'll be happy to answer any questions at this time.

Questions? Vice Mayor Brown? Thank you, Ms. Branch, for your exquisite budget presentation. Just two questions. What the what do we rank in terms of starting salary for teachers in the region?

When we excuse me. When we were looking at how to utilize that additional investment of 1,900,000, we looked at the $50.54 8 putting this at the top on the peninsula. Thank you.

Put them at the top

at the top, and I I will have a caveat that oftentimes we're very competitive, so sometimes, you know, once someone releases their starting salary, some other school leaders might even put a dollar on there. So sometimes there's some back and forth that happens, but when we looked at this, it would have put us on top of the peninsula.

Okay. And the other question, I appreciate this, welding and electrical programs, Is that integrated into the curriculum or that integrated into the academies?

It's a partnership that we have with the Virginia Yes, Community College, and we actually have that program but that is incorporated into our curriculum as far as just making sure that, you know, we have students who are

able to With their workforce development program?

Okay, good. Yeah. So, youngsters will get certs in electrical or Welding.

Welding. Yes.

Good. Thanks. Appreciate it.

Councilwoman Mugler.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you very much for the presentation. I want to call you Ms. Dorch because that's

It's my middle name so

that's fine. Okay. Good. It's good to see you. Yes. Ms. Branch. Couple of quick questions. One was the CPEG moving that over. So when you do that, is that going to eliminate that whole fund 60?

No, it won't eliminate the entire fund 60. What it will do is just move mainly like the salaries and benefits and non capital type purchases to our fund 50 operating budget, but we will keep the longer term or larger expenses that we utilize using the Verizon and Cox fees. We'll still utilize those in Okay. Fund

Makes great sense. Just curious. It was great to see the success of the pharmacy. And nice to see that being a nice healthy number in your revenue there. Just had one other little question and that was with respect to if I can find. Oh, hers. I noticed that that went up in your annual fee to them, but I was just curious how that happens when the fund is sloughing off.

Yes, so when our actuaries looked at the fact that we have a lot of employees that are living longer, what that meant was they needed to take a look at changing the mortality tables that they utilized in actuarial calculation. So based on employees living longer that changed with the mortality tables, that meant that we should be contributing a little more

on an annual basis.

Okay. Interesting. Okay. Thank you very much. It looks like a great budget and I'm sure it will produce great success for the school division. Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilwoman Harper.

Thank you, mister mayor. I have one question. I know some of the federal funding that you all get. Has has there been any discussion whether or not it's it's going to stay that way? Will there be any changes or are you? Ready to if there are any changes to kind of compensate so that you know you all are not missing or you know not doing anything because the federal money has changed?

We haven't been made aware of any decreases in our federal funding. We're not expecting any decreases, but one of the one of the major parts of our development process is to really look at the sustainability of our grants. So we look at that grant by grant and there were some decisions that had to be made based on where we saw grant funds may be being flat and not seeing increase So, did propose and the school board did approve us specifically with our special education grant to move some essential positions from that grant to fund 50 to make sure that we continue to provide those supports for our students. Thank you so much.

Any other questions? Okay. That's it. Ms. Branch, thank you.

Thank you.

I think we'll be seeing many of the school team tonight for the cuts and conversations presentation as well, Mr. Mayor.

Yes, indeed. Looking forward to it. Right. Yes.

So, really, this isn't a presentation as much as it is opportunity for staff to receive any comments, questions. And at this point if you have any suggestions, I realize it's before the first budget hearing so you may not, but we always set aside a little bit of time for you all to give us your first reactions to the manager's recommended budget which presented two weeks ago for the public. And of course the actual budget document itself was released online and in libraries on April 15 as well as to each of you. So if you do have some preliminary feedback or questions, we have our team here to answer those for you. And of course we'll all see what happens at the budget hearing tonight.

Councilwoman Harper, you got your light on.

You have a question?

Yeah. I just wanted to thank city manager Bunting, deputy city manager Brian DePorfio, and the staff. That that budget book is very nicely done. It was easy to read. And even with me going back several years, I'm old school, I still like to read books. I don't like electronic. So, but you know you could easily turn the pages and and you know, everything. So, I I just want to say thank you so much for the preparation that went into preparing that that book. It was very nicely done. Thank you.

Any other questions or comments regarding the FY '27 budget? I guess that just speaks volumes of the great work that you and the staff have done.

Thank you on behalf of the staff. I'm glad Councilwoman Harper took a moment to say that. Not so much for me, but for the team. Mean they really put in a lot of hours including some very late nights. View that budget book as a labor of love as well as their job. And they want it to put the community in that best possible light. As you all know, but for the benefit of the community, we have won excellence in budget reporting awards year after year after year, and we'd like to continue that tradition. But the public acknowledgment for all the hard work they've done is much appreciated. Thank you for taking the time for that. We'll remain available, of course, to questions, concerns, possible amendments. Again, a lot of times that's really more informed from the budget hearing, but we wanted to give you a chance this afternoon.

Okay. Alright. Well, thanks to the budget team and the finance department team. You're all out there. So great work on another fantastic budget. Didn't have any questions yet, so we'll see what the public brings this this week and next week, and we're looking forward to moving to final approval. Alright. Say imagine the next presentation.

Certainly. The last item we have today is a briefing on our resilient Hampton work for Fox Hill, Grand View and Harris Creek to develop their water plans. You may recall we've done water plans for other parts of the city and our commitment was getting around to doing them in all the areas. So this go around it was Fox Hill, Grand View and Harris Creek. And this water level watershed process helps us to identify coastal resilience and adaptation opportunities. And today we're just overviewing the planning process, preliminary community feedback, and the next steps, including work we'll be having with the community in the coming days and week. Today, we're going to have our Chief Resilience Officer, Olivia Askew, make the presentation, but I see she's brought many members of her team as well.

Yes, I have. Behind me, two members of the Resilience Division, Anna Hammond, and then a new team member, Grace Can, who you all may not have met before. Thank you, members of council, city manager, for having us today. This is what I propose to present to you all. It's been, you know, a while since we've gone up here and, you know, done an overview of what the Resilient Hampton Initiative is.

What is a water plan? The last time we adopted one was in 2023, and we have several new members of council. And then diving a little deep into the nature and risks of Fox Hill, Grand View, and Harris Creek, the three sub study areas. And then, the community engagement, what we've heard from the community, and where we are going with this planning process. So, for the Resilient Hampton initiative, as you may know, the resilience division is charged with coordinating the city's response to living with water, one of city council's strategic priorities.

And we look at water from two different facets. One, the challenge that water is for us in terms of flooding and coastal storms. But then the other side of that coin, that water is a very important asset to our community. I can't think of Hampton or the Peninsula without thinking about the water being on a boat, being out at the beach. So, look at water from both of those perspectives.

That it's a challenge that needs to be addressed, but then how can we use water as a great asset and build upon that? So, what does that look like in terms of implementation? So, for addressing the challenge, we're looking at various different types of infrastructure. So, infrastructure from a more gray hardened infrastructure, like a sea wall or raising a road, to things that are more green and work with nature, such as tree and habitat conservation, shoreline restoration, green infrastructure such as a rain garden. Then on the side of treating water as an asset, we look at considering coastal place making, the water economy, access to the waterway, allowing our citizens to be able to access the water, and then how do they access the water?

Are they using bikes, transit, cars? These are all different considerations that we have in our projects. So, have a definition of resilience, and it's different from other cities. Every city defines resilience in a certain way. For Hampton, our definition of resilience is asset based.

So, we're looking at bolstering our inherent strengths, so that when we have these chronic stresses, which you can see on the image to the right, the different impacts of water, so when we have those stresses and extreme events and shocks, such as storms, nor'easters, hurricanes, we're able to bounce back even stronger than before. So, using our inherent strengths, using those assets, so that when we have a chronic event, we're even stronger after that event. So, what is our mission? Our mission is to envision, create, and empower Hampton to live and thrive with water and the impacts of climate change through approaches driven by data and values. So what are some of those impacts of climate change that we are experiencing?

First, and most noteworthy, is higher sea levels. So the thresholds that you see on the left of one and a half feet of sea level rise by 2,050, three feet by 2,080, and four and a half feet by 2,100 are regionally adopted standard planning horizons that we use when designing projects. So, were adopted and endorsed by the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission, and a majority of municipalities that are doing resilience work across the planning district use these thresholds. So sea will rise and also add the increasingly more powerful and infrequent storms that we're getting, so rain, precipitation precipitation events. Put those two things together, and what are the impacts on our city, on our citizens?

So, we are having hotter years, so extreme heat days in the summer coming up, some hot days that we had recently. Urban heat island effects, so pockets of areas within the city where there's lots of impervious surface, reflects the heat and is really hot. Then the impacts of water. So we experience flooding throughout the city when there's not a cloud in the sky, so we call it sunny day flooding, primarily driven by winds or higher tides. Then our infrastructure, our storm water infrastructure, sometimes when there's higher tide events, the tides flow through our infrastructure into our city, instead of taking the water out of our city.

We have standing water because of poorly infiltrating urban soils, inland flooding along Newmarket Creek and some of our other creek systems, and then coastal storm impacts such as storm surge, flooding, wave action erosion along our shoreline, and then wind damage from those storms. So, the Resilient Hampton team buckets our work into three main buckets. Planning and policy, projects and programs, and people and partners. For planning and policy, we work primarily with our community development department on aligning how the city is planning to grow in the future, and considering what does that mean in terms of our climate risks. And then implementing policies throughout our development process that are aligned with these impacts.

Projects and programs, mentioned, we design with the community and construct different infrastructure projects throughout the city to reduce flooding and adapt to flooding, and then we offer several programs to our citizens. In the people and partners, we have a great network of community organizations, institutions, universities of higher education that we work with to implement resilience across the city. So, back in 2017, when the Resilient Hampton initiative was started, city, working with the community, identified principles and values to guide the work. So, we set out and decided how we were gonna do the work before we actually started doing the work. And those principles are to create values driven solutions, reinforce our assets, as you've heard me talk about, layer public benefits, so projects are only looking to address flooding, but also to have other benefits for the neighborhood.

Strengthen these very important partnerships that we have. Use the best available data, as data is always changing. And then share knowledge and resources with our partners across the region, and across the nation, and in some cases across the world. So, on the right are examples of some of our partners that we work with, and you can see that we work at multiple different scales within the city. From city wide large policy at the top, working within neighborhoods like the water plan, or down to the parcel level implementation projects as well.

The values that we have identified for the Resilient Hampton initiative are to be safe, to reduce risk, equitable, so creating benefits for all, natural, repairing and protecting our natural systems, nimble, being able to adapt to change, heritage, appreciating and supporting our local history, integrated, making sure that we're connecting systems so that we have multiple benefits, sufficient, leveraging public and private funding, and innovative, creating forward thinking solutions, and really pushing what resilience can be for a city. Also, to the work that we do is community building. We work hand in hand with community members and organizations to empower them to take resilient action on their own. Resilience isn't just something that the city, as an organization, can achieve. It takes every member of the community, every organization within the community doing what they can to pursue resilient community.

So for some of the the planning processes that we go through, we have citywide plans, and then we also have watershed level plans. So for citywide plans, I mentioned in 2017 where we established our values and principles, that's in the Living with Water Hampton plan. And then from the Living with Water Hampton plan, and I identified that we needed to do these watershed or neighborhood level plans. So we currently have two of those, one is for Newmarket Creek, and the other is for Downtown Phoebus and Buckroe, And then this next one that we're working on, Fox Hill, Grandview, and Harris Creek. Layer on top of that, we have some other citywide projects that we're working on or have accomplished.

So we have a natural infrastructure plan that's citywide, and then our Peninsula coastal storm risk feasibility study that we are doing with the Army Corps and our other non federal sponsor of the city of Pecosan. So the point of all these plans is not just to make plans and have them be on the shelf, but to implement projects. Here's an example of some of the projects that we have, either in design, completely designed, waiting for funding, being implemented such as Big Bethel Blu ray, or have been implemented such as Lake Hampton. So that's an introduction overview of Resilient Hampton. I'm gonna get into the water planning process and then the water plan that we're working on now.

So as I mentioned, the Living With Water plan identified that we needed to do these watershed level plans throughout the city. We made a commitment that we're going to go to every neighborhood and work with community members, work with stakeholders to identify what does resilience look like for you in the future. This map on the right was in that 2017 plan that broke the city into these six different planning areas. And we've largely kept to these outlines. So we've completed Newmarket Creek, portions of the Southwest Branch Back River area, Hampton River, and the Bay Facing, and then we're moving into this low line area up the Northeastern part of the city.

And why do we do this? So Hampton's neighborhoods are unique, and they require specific analysis based on local conditions. So we're considering things such and hydrology, how the water moves through the landscape, the age of infrastructure, the age of streets, sidewalks, the stormwater infrastructure varies across the city. Soils, how the city was developed, when it was developed, and then the culture. There's nuanced culture throughout Hampton, which I think is really important and unique.

And we consider that when doing resilience planning. So what is a water plan? So, in its essence, the water plan is a watershed slash neighborhood, the level coastal resilience plan to live and thrive with water. So, the graphic on the right, it shows that it's this cyclical process that we go through. We plan with the community, we design the projects and programs that are identified in the plan, and we implement them, and then we monitor those projects and programs to make sure that they're achieving our goals and our values, and if they're working.

And if not, change. And then we continue to plan and design, implement, monitor, and all the while we're engaging with the community through that process. So what's the purpose of the water plan? It does these three things. One, it analyzes the landscape physical and social, so looking at some of those factors that I mentioned previously.

It establishes a vision for the future of the watershed. It's important for us that this vision is shared with the community, shared with the neighborhood, and then it identifies projects to to implement and achieve that vision. We do this by using our resilience design strategies of slowing and storing water, defending and adapting buffering from coastal storms. So what does this look like? I want to break this down.

So for slowing, it's how can we slow water in the upland part of the landscape so that when it rains, it doesn't just rush down and flood lowland and coastal areas. So some of the methods that we use are bioswales. So that's an image of Mary Jackson Neighborhood Center that has several bioswales on the property. Primable pavement, rain gardens. Storing, it's to slow.

How can we store water in the uplands with the same intent so that it can slowly trickle downstream and not overwhelm downstream populations. Some ways of doing that are cisterns connected to buildings. Storm water parks, that's an image of Lake Hampton that was recently completed. And then underground storage solutions. Redirecting water through canals and channels.

This is basically how can you take your underground storm water system, open it up a little bit, and use it as an asset. Adapting along the shoreline in areas that are frequently flooded. This can be done through elevated buildings. This is one in Fox Hill. Floating buildings are an interesting solution that they use in other places in the world, and then elevating roads out of areas of hazard.

Buffering the coastal areas, this can be done through beach and dune nourishment, such as the beach nourishment that we do along Buckroe. Living shorelines, this is an example at Bluebird Gap Farm, and then offshore oyster reefs to slow down wave action. In the protecting, this is generally the more hardened type of infrastructure, so seawalls, foot walls, that's an image of Fort Monroe. We also have our seawall at Buckroe. And then berms and levees, it's basically another type of seawall, but a little bit more gentle instead of just a very tall structure.

And then on other side of the seawalls and berms and levees, what's infrastructure needed to get the water out behind it? So, drainage pumps, tide gates, and tide valves as well. So those are all of the various different strategies that we look at implementing. So, Fox Hill, Grand View, and Harris Creek. First off, I have to mention that this plan leverages several different funding sources.

One is a community flood preparedness fund grant from the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation. And then portions of project are funded through National Fish and Wildlife Foundations, National Coastal Resilience Fund, and the Department of War. So this is a study area. This is why we say that they're watershed slash neighborhood level plans, because the orange outline may not follow what you consider this neighborhood. But we've broken it out into these three sub areas so that we can do a little bit more detailed analysis.

So, again, the Northeastern part of the city includes Harris Creek Road and the neighborhoods around there, Fox Hill Road, the Fort Worth development, Beach Road, Hall Road, and then the Grand View Island proper on the side. So, I'm sure you all have been to these locations, but for anybody in the audience or watching online, I want to kind of show the character of these neighborhoods. Grand View Island, as its name states, is a barrier island for the city. It has some single family residential homes. It has hardened shoreline.

It also has the Grand View Nature Preserve, which is a natural area that's a city park. Has a wide and very vast wetland tidal wetland system, and then there's also a system of dunes along the beach itself. Fox Hill. So Fox Hill's primary interior exterior route is Beach Road, which floods very often now. Community members can say, you know that place right there that it floods every year, and they all know what they're talking about.

So we have those areas more rural than a lot of Hampton, but then you have a small main street field shown in the picture in the bottom right of, you know, the historic part of Fox Hill. But then along the fringes, have the water economy. So there's several different marinas, both public and private, in boat launches as well. Haresqueak is different from the other two because there are more rural areas, especially as you get closer to the water, but then you have the postwar housing developments as well. So you have like a lot of density near areas vulnerable to flooding along Harris Creek.

So as I said, and you all may be aware of this, but these areas experience several different flooding events. They experience hurricanes and tropical storms. These are some pictures from 2009, Hurricane Irene. In 2003, Hurricane Isabelle. But then they also have more nuance and nuisance and sunny day flooding.

Particularly they get flooded a lot by nor'easters just because of the way that the water bodies are angled such as Harris Creek, Grenlin, Wallace Creek. So this is some of the tidal flooding and sunny day flooding that occurred this past fall when we had a nor'easter and our king tide happen on the same weekend. So when we map this out, what does it what does it look like? So this is a map of our present day flood risk. So you have the two colors in blue, the lighter blue and the darker blue.

The lighter blue is the ten year flood event. So this is basically an area where there's a 10% chance of flooding occurring every year, and then the area in dark blue says that there's a 50% chance of this area flooding every year. And you can see that the red dots that are scattered across the map are information that we've received from the public of where it floods. So you can see that it's widespread throughout the study area. So this is 2040, taking those sea level rise threshold horizons that we discussed.

So you can see that the flood plain is moving inland, so there's a larger area that is projected to flood 50% chance every year. And then, when you go all the way out to 2060, again, moving further in, pretty much the whole study area is projected to be able to flood a 50 chance every year, but then you also start seeing areas that are gonna be part of the daily tidal cycle. So mean high water, that darkest blue color. So you can see that. We're projecting to experience a loss of land in some of these areas.

So what have we heard from the community? So we began doing community interviews in August and October of this past fall, and then we held three community meetings at the Fox Hill Neighborhood Center in October and November. Part of those interviews, we conducted 23 interviews with residents from all three of the study areas, Fox Hill, Granbury Island, and Harris Creek. And that was the first part of our community engagement process because we wanted to ask the community, how do you want to be engaged? So, that was important for us before we proceeded.

And then those three open house meetings that we held in October, where we had about 160 attendees attend those open houses. And this is a picture of kind of the feel of what those open house meetings look like. So, what do we specifically ask? There's some things that we always ask. One, where is it flooding? What areas do you think you should be conserved? So this is getting to that asset approach that we use. And then we ask some different questions this time. Why do you think it's flooding? What the the education level across the community?

We asked how has flooding impacted your daily life? Because that's already happening for these residents. And then what types of resilient strategies may the community be interested in having? So, again, we map all the information that we receive. We take down the comments that we hear. This information is included in the presentation for you if you want to look into more detail. But we took all the information that we received and developed themes and were able to bucket all of the comments. And it came down to really these five themes. One, flooded roads. Roads are flooding, and it makes travel difficult and sometimes dangerous.

Community members are concerned about restricted assets, so access. So, when roads flood and neighborhoods routinely become isolated, they're concerned that emergency services may not be able to access them if there's an emergency. There is a perception in the community that a lack of maintenance on stormwater infrastructure and on ditches and pipes is contributing to flooding. Is noted that shoreline erosion is occurring, particularly along Grand View, and that the erosion and higher tides are impacting community assets, including the beaches and wetlands. And then there's also documented property damage that flood water can enter homes, garages, crawl spaces, causing damage to property and vehicles.

So where are we going? So we're taking the vulnerability analysis that staff has done, we're taking the community feedback and engagement results that we've done, and we are hosting next week a three day design workshop and public gallery walks at the Fox Hill Neighborhood Center. So the objective of these workshops is to bring together city staff, professional stakeholders, state agencies, local together in a room to take the vulnerability analysis, take the community feedback, and develop a suite of conceptual strategies to achieve resilience that incorporate that community feedback and that they meet the ultimate goals of the water plan. So it's broken up in three days. The first one is we're working from the shoreline in.

So the first day is looking at coastal nature based solutions, moving inland, looking at hybrid infrastructure strategies. And then day three is, okay, we've identified all these different strategies, how do we make it happen? Are there policy hurdles that we need to address? Is there state legislation that we need to look at getting going to be able to do these things? And at the evening of each of these days, there's a public gallery walk that the public is invited to from 05:30 to 06:30 p.

M. To come and see what work has been done. This is really an opportunity to be transparent with the public so that they can see where we're thinking. But at the end of all the design workshops, city staff will take a step back and come back out to the community in June with a public open house with a formal presentation of the work that was done for the design workshops. So after that, those design workshops and going back out to the public, we take the information, we refine the projects, and that'll be a long time span to do refinement, working amongst the public, the planning team, working with our engineers to see what's actually feasible.

We'll be doing a preliminary benefit cost analysis. We're gonna be looking at the economic cost of doing nothing. And all of that will be presented back to the community and back to you all as the formal water plan. We'll be asking for the water plan to be adopted as a comprehensive plan amendment. And then we'll take that plan, and we'll use it to secure funding and implement solutions like we have a history of doing. So thank you. To anybody in the public, we have a newsletter. You can use this QR code to sign up. We use it to talk about projects, events, and just some education. But thank you all for having me today and lending me your ear.

Thank you, Olivia. Questions? Okay. Councilwoman Campbell.

Thank you. Great presentation. I do have a question about the waterways outside of the area that are probably state and federal since they do send a lot of stuff, sand, debris back inland. Are you working with any dredging, specifically Wallace's Marina up Factory Point in that area to try to get that stuff dredged? I know some of the folks are running aground and that's probably sending it back upriver. So what's the plan there? How does that work? Yes. So our Public Works stormwater team is the main folks who project manage our dredging program. That So they are looking at reoccurring dredging cycles of those water bodies.

Part of that that we will be looking at is how can we use those dredge spoils, as they're called, for resilience. There's something called thin layer placement that basically takes that the sediment and considers how can we, with a very light touch, put it on our wetlands that are sinking and drowning, and to help them adapt to sea level rise. So, in that way, we're going to be looking at dredging, but in terms of like the programmatic aspects of our dredging program, that's mainly handled by our public works team. Vice

Mayor Brown.

Yes. Thank you, Olivia. Just a quick question. When you go into neighborhoods and have community meetings and talk about flooding and these types of issues, do we have any grants that would be available for neighborhood associations to apply for grants? And if we do, do we provide, as a staff, any technical assistance to them in helping them to write a grant or get a grant approved.

What type of grants would you be looking at?

Any grant that would help them mitigate flooding, you know, water rise, sea level rise, and whatever, you know, issues they're having.

Yeah. There are a couple of programs that we offer. Under the resilience division, we have the Virginia Conservation Assistance Program, which helps with funding for living shorelines, which may help if erosion is occurring. We are working actively right now on getting our rain grant program up and running, would be parcel level storm water, so rain practices to reduce flooding from that. Our housing and neighborhoods office has the places and spaces, and it's called the neighborhood improvement grants.

That's a large pot of funding that organizations can look at to, you know, do projects on public land, and those can be resilience projects. We're perfectly willing and happy to work with organizations to help develop those. I think that that's probably the three primary

So, citizens

We have some more, if it's okay. I'm just a different one answer.

Finish my statement So, how do we how do citizens know what these opportunities are in terms of grants and how do we get the word out to them for assistance?

Yeah. We typically use our standard means of communication, such as our newsletter, our website, the city's e news. We periodically push these programs out. We've considered for our Virginia Conservation Assistance Program doing mailers to properties that are on the shoreline that are having to live in shoreline is feasible. Whenever we do community presentations, because neighbor organizations will ask us to come out and give presentations, we mention them. But there's certainly opportunities. If you have any recommendations of how we can reach our neighbors better, we would take those opportunities.

Mr. Vice Mayor, since the Vice Mayor asked the question, in addition to the ones Olivia mentioned, emergency management works with property owners that would qualify for home elevation opportunities through the FEMA mitigation grant program. And as you likely know, but for benefit of citizens, we've raised quite a number of homes over the years through that program. There are a mix of programs that come along. Some of them are 100% covered by the federal government.

Some of them though do require homeowner match. Usually when we're able to get the homeowner match is when they've had the storm impact because they're getting some insurance proceeds that help them to put towards that. But we are constantly looking for those kind of grant opportunities. Wesson Walker is a really great writer of those types of grants. They do work together with the Resiliency Office to make sure that we understand the water plans that have been adopted for an area.

So if we're looking at a property, is it one that's better suited to elevation or a possible acquisition? We have gotten some money in the past from Congressman Scott as an example, congressionally directed funding to actually outright purchase homes and then help relocate someone to an area because they're in a particularly vulnerable part of the city. But those are bigger swings that come only usually in response to natural disasters. They're not there all the time. And I'm not being political when I say this but a lot of that money has been rolled back under the current federal administration.

It's just not been as high of a priority for them as other things. And so I can't say when the next opportunity to get those monies will be, but I did want to note that we try to work with homeowners on elevation and or acquisition projects as appropriate.

Any other questions? Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. I want to say I'm just really glad that we have a staff in place, a team dedicated to kind of looking at the data and then helping us begin to prepare for what's to come. Because when I look at 2100 and you say that or you show that sea level rise another four and a half feet by 2100.

So seventy five years from now, you know, my granddaughters will be senior citizens then. But but, I mean, it underscores, you know, really what we are facing here at Hampton because you also mentioned, you know, when when you look at the maps and how the storm water, the storm surge could occur between now and 2060, and that we we have, you know, the potential for loss of land, which I I take that to mean that there are places where people live in Hampton today that will be uninhabitable, you know, thirty five years from now. So, you know, we won't be able to live in those areas because of the water. And then, you know, you talked about some of the different projects, some of the structural projects that we need to invest in to help protect us from what's to come. And I wanted to ask the city manager to talk about, you know, you know, one, the cost of those structural projects and what we have been working on for so many years to try to put ourselves in a position to get federal funding for them and just to really talk to where we are with that today.

So

I think the mayor is speaking about our efforts with the Corps of Engineers to look at coastal resiliency through the CSRM or 3x3x3 study processes as more colloquially referred to. I think it was back in 2014 or 2015 we made our first request to get one of these studies. These are studies that are basically gatekeepers if you will to getting access to federal funding to When we talk about structural implementation, some of them are the things that you heard here. For those who maybe paid more attention to some of the national stuff, hear about levees for instance in New Orleans or tidal gates in other places. These are the types of things that tend to protect whole cities or whole parts of cities.

They're very, very expensive. But the federal government does typically pay roughly 65% of those costs if you go through the gatekeeping of the core CSRM or 3x3x3 study process. So we started asking for that. Actually the way we sort of got there initially was we had asked for a study for Newmarket Creek area. We thought under what was another program they have called the continuing appropriations continuing authorities appropriation process or CAP.

And they told us they couldn't do any structural project under that. So they started looking at elevations and or acquisitions as a way help that neighborhood. But they told us that to get the structural things you're looking at you're going to have to go through this process. So the reason I take the time to explain that is we've been asking since 2014, 2015 to be in that process. And a couple years ago we were finally told we're in that process and by the way you're going to be in a fully funded study so you don't even have to pick up the local match for doing the study itself.

Only to find out after we had been in that process for a bit of time that the rules had changed or the interpretation of the rules had changed and we were limited to a max of $3,000,000 for the study process, which coincidentally they said was not enough to even study structural solutions, which was the whole reason why we had gotten that study process in the first place. So they pushed us back to looking at structural solutions which are the elevations, the home acquisitions or other flood proofing mechanisms that you can do. And that's where we are right now. But we pushed back on the corn and said look we started asking this long ago, over ten years ago, to really be able to look at the structural. You need to help us get this fixed.

And I'm really pleased to say that our congressman, Scott and also Congressman Whitman who has Pocosin because Pocosin was also in this study had been working to get the language fixed so the study can ultimately look at structural issues as well. But they've also put in a part two study to hopefully get us if they can't get the language fixed, get us a new study. It seems like every time we make progress and where we think we are the core rules change on us and we have to try another strategy. So we're not yet at the point where I can say they are studying the structural issues that will get us some of these bigger dollar solutions at the 65%, 35% ratio that is available once you complete that process. But we're going keep persisting in that way.

A lot of the work that Olivia and her team and the contractual engineers and the community are doing together will serve as a blueprint for that work. In fact the corps commended us on our work and said that they would actually, if we can get that structural study, use a lot of the work to make it go faster. But they have to do the study for us to get that larger federal funding. Norfolk and Virginia Beach have both had their studies done or nearing done in the case of Virginia Beach. And we had actually asked we were kind of in before Virginia Beach but we got bypassed by Virginia Beach because of the size of Virginia Beach.

So we're hoping that the federal government will see fit to either fix the language as Congressman Scott and Congressman Whitman have suggested or to give us that second study so that we can ultimately get a CSRM that covers the structural as well as the nonstructural.

Okay. Thank you for that.

Did I miss any of that up, Olivia? That's great.

Okay. Alright. So, if there are no other questions, that's the final presentation.

Thank you.

Unless anybody had any questions for Olivia. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So, are there any regional issues? Are there any items for new business? Alright. If there are none, I'm gonna ask the clerk to read the motion required for closed session.

The motion required is to complete a closed session pursuant to 2.23711 a seven and eight for consultation with legal counsel to receive updates concerning pending litigation and other material legal issues and transactions pursuant to 2.23711 a three and eight to discuss potential acquisition of real property in the Newmarket Creek area where discussion in open session would adversely affect the city's negotiating strategy and consultation with legal counsel concerning specific legal issues related to the same and pursuant to 2.2-3711A1 for consideration appointments as listed on the agenda as well as appointments to the Economic Development Authority and Citizens Police Advisory Group and to discuss the performance of a council appointee.

Alright. I need a motion and a second.

Move approval, Mr. Mayor.

Second. Any discussion? Alright. Would you call the roll please?

Councilman Bowman? Aye. Vice Mayor Brown? Aye. Councilwoman Campbell? Councilwoman Farabi? Aye. Councilwoman Harper? Aye. Councilwoman Mugler? Aye. Mayor Gray?

Aye. So we will convene in closed session at 02:25 in the Lawson Conference Room, and 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. So with that, we are adjourned.