City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome. City Council is now in session. Please stand for the invocation by Council Member Butler Barlo, which will be followed by the pledge of allegiance to the flag.

Let us pray. As we conduct our final meeting of 2025, we ask for wisdom and grace as we strive to make the best choices for our citizens and our staff. In our decision-making tonight and at all times, may we honor one another by keeping open minds. May we listen to one another with intent and may we speak to one another with truth. In this season of light, love, peace, and joy, we give thanks for our many blessings. We ask for strength to face our many concerns and we pray for a safe and joyful holiday for all. Amen. Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. The Freedom of Information Act certification is required at this time. Madam Clerk, please present the resolution for consideration.

A resolution certifying the closed meeting of December 17, 2025 pursuant to Virginia Code section 2.2-3712 as amended is presented at this time. Now therefore, be it resolved that to be it resolved that the city council of the city of Suffach hereby certifies that to the best of each member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of Virginia law and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard, discussed or considered by the city council, the city of Suffach in the closed meeting. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Council, a motion would be in order. Council member Bennett. Move for approval.

A motion for approval from council member Bennett. Council member Williams. Second. Second from council member Williams. There any discussion of the motion? Hearing none. Council members prepare to vote. Please cast your vote. Madam clerk, please record the vote. The motion is approved by a vote of 8 to zero. We'll now move to approval of the minutes from the September 3rd, 2025 work session and regular meeting. And a motion would be in order. Council member Johnson. Got a motion for approval from council member Johnson. Council member Williams. Second it.

Second from Council Member Williams. Any discussion the motion hearing? None. Council members prepare to vote. Please cast your vote. Madame clerk, kindly record the vote. Motion is approved by vote of 8 to zero. Uh we do have one special presentation this evening uh related to SUFFK community resources update. Mr. Manager, please provide an overview.

Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of council. This evening's presentation will feature a number of guest speakers that will provide overviews on services offered for those in need. This evening you'll hear from leadership representing the Coalition Against Poverty for Kids, the Western Tidewater Free Clinic, SUFFK Social Services, and then uh deputy city manager Aziz Felder will provide an update on the homeless shelter project. Our representative from the CAPS group is going to lead us off. Good evening. Thank you for this amazing opportunity to share more about CAPS Coalition Against Poverty and Sufffort. My name is Sharon Holland. I serve as the executive director. Um, I'm here on behalf of CAPS to briefly share who we are, the services we provide, and why we are requesting consideration for increase in funding at this time. This request is driven by current economic conditions and a growing service gap for families with children experiencing homelessness. And I do have some handouts why this matters. Nationally, HUD reports that more than 14500 children experienced homelessness on a single night in the United States. In Virginia, the most recent HUD point in time count identified that over 2400 people and families with children experiencing homelessness statewise. Regionally, the southeastern Virginia homeless coalition point in time count, which includes Western Tidewater and Sufffort continues to identify families

with children experiencing homelessness despite limit shelter options for this population. These numbers confirm what we are seeing locally. Family homelessness remains present, persistent, and underresourced. Why are we in this community? CAPS was established in 2012 by 12 founding churches responding to unmet needs of suffer. Today, CAPS includes 29 to 35 churches and works closely with nonprofit, faith-based, and community partners. We function as a coordination hub, helping helping residents navigate emergency assistance, housing stabilization, and referrals when systems do not fully align. Over the years, CAPS have served more than 2,000 suffer residents through emergency service, homelessness, prevention, and stabilization services. Our role has always been to feel gaps, not duplicate services. CAPS currently provide emergency financial assistance, housing stabilization and homelessness prevention, coordination of shelter and homelessness short-term housing options, resource navigations and referral to partners agency. Our night shelter program will start December the 31st through March 11. And we are expecting more churches to assist as we would love to expand um to um April 2026. So we excited about that. CAPS have always also provided um in partnership with the community our community kitchen program which serve over 55 residents monthly hot meal. So that is super exciting. During the government shutdown and furlow caps partnered with suffer foundation and provided emergency assistance for over six families and that did include food as well. All of our service we use um HMIS which stands

for homeless management information system and charity tracker to ensure accountability and transparency. Even with reduced funding, CAP served 172 households representing approximately 600 individuals in the most recent years. So we are requesting ongoing um support and even though um I wanted to highlight three key points. One being ongoing economic stability since the pandemic and secondly limited shelter capacity for um families and we are in partnership with RIA in um the new shelter is important. However, it um holds 32 single adults and does not accommodate families with children. So this leaves uh families with a local emergency um shelter without a local emergency shelter. So that is one of our um in request for the increase. Um hotel stay will be unavailable. Um the hotel stay program for families this winter season will be unavailable for services. Um um that program filled a critical gap particularly during the winter months. So with the closure during the winter season has shifted this will increase the demands um directly on caps. So again uh we value our partnership with the city of suffer and we work to complement and not replace city efforts. Families with children should not be left without safe options during times of crisis. An increase in funding allows CAPS to continue serving as a reliable accountable gap filler for suffer residents. And I have some facts for you. Did you know why support unhoused individual systematic and in and structural barriers drive housing instability? One crisis to lead to loss of housing, job loss, health emergency. And why do we use this term unhoused? It focus on circumstances and not stable,

not identity. So that's not who they are. So, um I want to share in closing a brief um a brief story. Because of your support, CAPS is currently providing a twoeek hotel stay to a couple of to a couple who normally sleeps in a tent right here off of Carolina Highway. It was 19 degrees outside this week as you know, right? And that mean it was extremely cold. We didn't see this couple on um the five o'clock news. We didn't see them on Tik Tok. We didn't see them on YouTube. We saw them right here in our neighborhood. Caps will not be selling. Our night shelter program will start again on December 31st. And this couple will be joining us. Caps will also assist with obtaining resources for Roman board. And again, I just want to say thank you for this opportunity to share and also to serve our community. And lastly, we are better together. Thank you again.

Thank you. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, city manager, members of council. My name is Thaylor McCormack, and I'm the CEO of four kids. And as I was driving here this evening, I was thinking back on when we first arrived in Suffach. And that was back in 2008. So, it is amazing to me it has been 17 years. So, we came to Suffach because the Suffach family shelter was shutting down and uh local community leaders were looking for somebody to take over those shelter operations. So, at the time, uh the Center for Hope and New Beginnings was serving six families a night. Fast forward 17 years. For Kids Now works on a daily basis with about 93 families and almost 200 children here in Suffach. So on a typical day at the Bird Song Center right there across from McDonald's, uh we have 15 staff working. We have mental health clinicians, case managers, housing specialists, uh a whole variety of folks really working with families to move them out of that image original crisis of homelessness and to be able to be safe and stable and paying taxes. um and and really be able to have a future for the children that are experiencing homelessness in our programs. What we know about children experiencing family homelessness is it doesn't tend to be a a one a one-stop deal. We don't have children in their houses one day and then they are in our

shelter programs and housing programs the next. The the path of family homelessness tends to be a long one. So families are moving place to place with family members, friends, boyfriends into hotel, back out. Um and it is a constant migrancy and because of that it has a massive impact on our children. What we know with children experiencing homelessness here in Suffach is they have a chronic absenteeism rate of 55%. So over half of children that are experiencing homelessness here in Suffach are missing over 18 days of school a year and that is putting them profoundly behind. So what we do um at four kids and at the birdung center we work on shelter. We also bring in resources for rapid rehousing. So through our shelter programs we assist approximately seven families every night in shelter. They stay on average for uh hot off the presses. um they stay on average for about 86 days. Um it has been longer, certainly was longer during the pandemic. One of the things that we're really struggling with, which I'd just love to raise to your attention tonight, is even when we have resources to rehouse families. Um we too often cannot get a unit to move a family into. So, one thing I want to leave with you tonight is um there's a lot of work that for kids needs to do and all my compatriots with CAPS and the rest of the nonprofit programs, but if we really want to combat family homelessness in Suffach, we have to focus on housing. Housing that our workforce can afford. Um so, that's kind of my my big pitch. Couple things just to report. So, we talked about shelter. Um, we're bringing in almost a half a million in rapid rehousing assistance. So that means we can get families quickly out of shelter,

first month's rent, security deposits, some declining assistance while they stabilize. One of the newest things that we have been working on since summer of last year is eviction prevention. We were able to garner a grant from the state which we then brought resources into Suffach to be able to prevent evictions. And as um I'm approaching my 30th year with four kids uh in January and what I know is that homelessness is profoundly expensive. Its impact long term on our families, our kids, and even the cost for us to be able to house them in hotel programs and rehouse them, the costs um move into the thousands. So when a family becomes homeless, it's going to take me exclusive of all my services about four to 5,000 to rehouse them. So what we've been working on through eviction um reduction is to try and keep families out of homelessness in the first place. So when we have and even our families that are living in extreme poverty and they may be paying 60 70 80% of their income on housing, so many of the families in poverty here in Suffach are still making it and they they piece it together. They choose between medications and food and their housing, but they piece it together. but a single flat tire sick kid bad case of the flu and they are out of housing. So what we know is if I can help you with this short-term assistance. So with our eviction reduction pilot, we have now prevented 89 evictions here in SUFFK since last summer at a cost of about 2,000 per family. So we're excited about that work. That's the right. That's just like great social policy for us to be able to help families not become

homeless in the first place. Across all our programs as that we work here in SUFFK, 89% of our families access attainable housing. And we are wildly happy to say uh for afterchool programs that now 90% of our children are advancing to the next grade despite profound delays. Um, after 17 years, um, what was a small shelter operation, we now deploy over three million in services into the city, direct city funding, um, comes in to support that at 115,000. So, which is 4% of the funds that we bring into the community. And I submit to you that is great bang for your city buck. Um but we are delighted to be here, delighted to work on this great work together and um I want to thank you for your support um over the last 17 years and wish everybody a happy holidays and merry Christmas.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Duman, Vice Mayor Ward, Council members, our acting manager Hughes, and our city staff that are present tonight, as well as all those in attendance. Uh, I am Ashley Green, executive director at Western Tower of Free Clinic, and very honored and appreciative of being here tonight. Right off the bat, I want to say thank you to our partners in the room, those who you all have asked to come forward. We are a network um as this city is as well. So, I just want to thank them for their work and for you all for asking us to be here tonight. Um as you know, we've been a vital resource from a healthc care perspective since our inception in 2007. This city has supported us in that journey since we were just a vision and we are grateful for that. Um, our lifesaving resources work in conjunction with our partners. I have a few statistics. I know we were honored to have our um board chair, Mr. Wendle Waller was here just a couple weeks ago to share a few um numbers um to tell you a story and to thank you for what you've done. So this is really just a followup and some more updated information for you in this year since January uh 2025 and through October. Last year we had record numbers. Let me preface with that. We've never served as many as we did in 2024. We served so far to date through October 31 1,635

distinct patients. Last year for the whole year, we served 1715. So, we're looking that we are going beyond what we've already done. We recorded so far to date 12,774 visits. That's a 9% increase from the same period last year. That resonates within most all of our service lines. It reflects the community's trust in our services, that we are serving our patients well, and that we are providing the highquality comprehensive health care that you all depend on us to provide. Among those served, almost 200 patients were with us for mental health support. That is a 4% increase in patients, but a 9% increase in the visits they received, reflective of what we're seeing in our trends. Medical also has a 9% increase from the same period last year. Dental is looking at a 6% increase and that's coming off of a doubling expansion, as you all know, a capital expansion of our dental clinic. We have a wait list so there is more to be done. Our pharmacy is also active. We have served through October 31 over 12,000 30-day medications. These are free medications for those who are able to access those. That's a 19% increase in what we've done the same period last year. This rise is a testament to the fact that over 90% of our patients have multiple chronic illnesses, some that we all share as in hypertension, um diabetes, we have um cholesterol issues. We have

all the same things in our clinic that we all live with. These are lifechanging diagnosis if you do not have access to medications. So that's a cornerstone as we believe in a foundational service line mental health. So these are critical pieces you all help us sustain. Greatest need is specialty services. We do what we can within our walls, but I'm pleased to share that we have expanded those resources. We have some specialty women's health volunteers. We have a medical um interpreter that is certified and trained and is working with us for language being a barrier because that is a barrier to care. And we also host numerous student programs across not only the Commonwealth but really across the United States because we have multiple nurse practitioner programs from all over. Our annual cost of care to do what we do is $1600 a patient. I'm just going to stop a moment with that. Annual cost of care, which is based on how many we serve and the expense of our budget, is $1600 a patient. Our patients receive over $6.2 million in services. So, I say that to explain and to illustrate that that's a pretty good ROI, 2.3 if you're counting and doing the math. more than that on any given day. In some cases, these SUFFK citizens, which make up 62% of our patient population right now, 62% are Suffach residents, they receive $1.7

million. Their cost of care is $1.7 million. They receive almost $4 million in care by being with us. you all help us do that. It's a strong investment for the city and other stakeholders, especially considering that 76% of our patients by being in our care do not seek treatment in the emergency department. pretty um good statistic as far as once they reach care with us because not only is that a better resource for the local emergency department, that frees that resource up for you and your families with the savings and investment. We hope that what we do makes a difference beyond just money. We're talking about health outcomes that improve with statistics that we track based on being in our care. So, the A1C's are lowered, the blood pressures are controlled, we have multiple outcomes that we can share. I won't bore you with that tonight. Tonight is just a very fancy annual report that cost us more than we should spend. So, please take one. Um, but at the end of the day, our patients are healthier and that's what we want. Almost half of our patient population are employed with 62% of that being Suffach residents. They work here in this community. We stand ready to serve. We stand ready to serve with your partnership. I also want to remind you that we in early conversations with city management prior to the homeless shelter being opened, which is coming. I'm very excited for that. We had pledged to support that effort by providing health care for those who are in that shelter. So, just

as a reminder for you, we still stand ready to serve those who are eligible. We expect most all of them will be and we're just around the corner. We do have some impacts coming. I am part of a network across the association which I'm now on the board. The Virginia Association of Free and Charitable Clinics. We stand ready and are prepared for what the ACA marketplace impacts are going to be which are immediate and Medicaid down the road. We are what's called a hybrid. We take uninsured and we take Medicaid covered patients. We anticipate and already realized that in 2025 our Medicaid income is much reduced. That is a charitable cost of reimbursement. We never charge a patient. We are under budget for that. In 2026, we lowered that even more. We budgeted in 25 for 15% of our income to be Medicaid income. That is not going to be realized. In 2026, we're budgeting 12. Maybe that'll be realized. Maybe not. More and more of our patients are uninsured. So, our numbers are inverted now. More are uninsured, lesser Medicaid. Even though they are so low income that they will remain in our care. They will not leave us because we won't let them go. We're their health home. We provide medical, dental, vision, mental health, medications, one-on-one patient education on a daily basis to whoever walks in our door that is eligible. So, we are working in a funding deficit. In 2025, our board approved an operating reserve funding deficit. We tried to procure replacement income. That was not realized. 2026 we have determined that

we have a little less deficit still working in operating reserves. But I say that to let you understand the landscape we're working in. All of us in the safety net are looking at less and less income and offset to do more and more and more. So thank you for what you're doing. Thank you for your commitment to your citizens. It makes a difference. and actually it gives back to our community. Wish you all happy holidays. Thank you.

Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. So, first, honorable Mayor Duman, Vice Mayor, esteemed council, staff. Thank you so much for having us here again this evening. I'm Toya Taylor. I'm one of the assistant directors um with the Department of Social Services. I am She's hiding. I am joined um by the other assistant director, Miss Danielle Williams. We were asked to come before you today and and give you an update about what we're seeing in the uh social services landscape. We were told we have seven minutes. So Danielle and I met and decided that was impossible that we would just give you a really high level of what we're seeing, try to answer any questions if you have any and and and just keep you informed about what we're seeing on the city side. Um thank you to our nonprofit partners because they're right. We are partners. We all work together for the good of um our residents here in Suffuk. Do you have the Oh, it's right here. So, in honor of our seven minutes, we're going to jump right in. The VDSS mission, uh, the Virginia Department of Social Services mission is this long mission that you see in front of you on the screen. What I'm going to ask you today is that we are people helping people triumph. If you remember that, that we are people and you are people and we're helping one another triumph. That is our goal. I'm standing in front of you as a proud city employee and a proud city resident. Suffach again and again and again shows off in your commitment to our residents and we want to thank you so much for that. So what do we do? Um you'll see that just for purposes of the hierarchy, we break our services down into benefits and services. That's really more to make sure Danielle and I both have equal amount of stress um in our day-to-day

work. benefits really, if I have to to draw an umbrella picture for you, benefits focuses on, but not this does not apply to every single program, but the benefits side of the house really focuses on eligibility determination and monitoring ongoing to ensure that people are accessing the services they're accountable for. The services side of the house, the side of the house that I work in, is the side of the house that does that one on-one. We're in the homes. We're seeing people um real people, real residents right here in Suffach every single day to work intensively to meet their needs and ensure that they have what they want in need mostly need.

Are you gonna click for me? Okay.

Good evening, honor honorable Mayor Duman, honorable Vice Mayor Ward, distinguished members of council, Mr. City Manager. As Toy said, I'm Danielle Williams and I have the privilege to serve the citizens of Suffuk as assistant director for benefit programs. So, what programs fall under the umbrella of benefit programs? Um, the real estate tax relief program for eligible disabled persons and the veterans real estate relief program provide a reduction or exemp exemption, excuse me, of real estate property taxes for eligible homeowners. We're excited that effective January 1st, 2026, in addition to the real estate relief, we will now be offering personal property tax assistance to eligible elderly and disabled residents. Supplemental Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP provides food benefits to lower-income individuals and families to supplement their grocery budget. SNAP can be used like cash to buy eligible items from authorized retailers. We saw the effect of SNAP during the recent government shutdown and how that affected our citizens. Medicaid and family access and medical insurance security plans are medical assistance programs that make direct payments to health care services providers for eligible individuals and families who are unable to pay for needed medical services. There's several different Medicaid programs depending on your income and your demographic and eligibility for each of those programs vary. The childare subsidy program. This assists families in paying for child care costs for children under age 13 or children with special needs under age 18 who reside with the applicant. Couple more programs I'd like to bring to your attention. The Virginia Assistance Program for EAP on a federal level you'll hear hear it referred to as LAP. This program assists lowincome households in meeting their immediate home energy needs. Energy assistance program consists of five components. Five components, excuse me. fuel assistance, crisis assistance, cooling assistance, the PIP program, and weatherization assistance. The Workforce Development Center, I'm sure you all

have had opportunity to meet our dynamic coordinator, Miss Susan Stubber. She helps to empower residents to build brighter futures by providing personalized comprehensive career support and connecting them to highquality education, training, employment, and opportun opportunities. We've had opportunity to work with economic development and um by having our because we are able to strengthen the local workforce and drive that drives our city's economic vitality by partnering with employers and matching them with well-qualified job ready talent. TANF temporary assistance for needy families. This program provides temporary monthly cash payments for families with eligible children living in their home just to simply meet their basic needs. The Virginia Initiative for Education Work or View promotes economic independence through participation in employment related activities, education, training, and supportive services that enables families with eligible children to become self-sufficient. So, in the interest of time, we've uh just highlighted a few of the benefit programs that have shown the most change in demand for workforce development. Since 2022 when the current coordinator began, there has been a 700% increase in the number of people served as workforce at workforce development center for the SNAP program. Since fiscal year 2021, there's been 11% increase of Suffach residents receiving SNAP benefits to battle food insecurity. Prior to Virginia's expansion of Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act, there were 14,897 suffer residents receiving Medicaid in 2017. At the end of fiscal year 25, there are 28,385 active Medicaid enrollies in Suffukk. This is a almost 100% increase. Their energy assistant program has had a 29% increase in participants and we anticipate that number growing even more due to heating I'm excuse me due to rising heating and cooling costs. Suffuk currently has 1,028 families

participating in the TAM program, which is an 11% increase since fiscal year 21. The total the number of children receiving financial assistance for safe and quality child care has more than doubled since fiscal year 21. It's especially remarkable that the benefit program staff have continued to serve in the spirit of excellence to our clients despite having the same number of staff we had in 2017. So although the numbers have in some cases increased to 700% the number of the people serving that has not increased.

My turn again. I should have went first because Danielle's slides make me look like my staff aren't working. Um but I promise you they are. They are. Um so again very high level. We're just going to hit on some of the um most popular or most known programs that we we provide in social services. The first two that everyone thinks of are child and adult protective services. You all know this. This is abuse. This is neglect. This is exploitation. I was having a conversation with my mother um a week or two ago and she says to me, and my mother's also a city resident, but she says to me, "Oh, it's the holiday seasons. I'm sure you all are slowed down." And I said, "Uhuh uh uh uh, not in our world. In our world, holiday actually means things go up, stress goes up, trauma goes up. Unfortunately, we see our numbers rising during the holiday season. We provide prevention and inhome services. I need to be very clear. This is not a generalized prevention program. This is to prevent further acts of abuse or neglect. So that means these children that are in this um that are being served under prevention and inh home have already experienced either abuse or neglect and we are in their homes to help prevent another instance of abuse or neglect. or unnecessary entry into foster care. I don't know if you all remember me, but when I was here earlier 2025, we talked about foster care and foster care awareness month. I talked to you about how important of a service it is and the number of children that are residents of the city of Suffach that are actually in our custody, your custody. These are your kids, our kids together. Um right now it's just a little over 60 children. Um, but we are attempting, working very hard with families so that not one more child has to enter foster care unnecessarily. I just mentioned foster care, so I'm going to jump right past that. And I want to bring this term to your hearing because a lot of people don't know what it means when you hear it. A lot of people, well, now it's called resource

homes, but back in the day it was called foster homes. Do you all know what that is? Foster homes. Same thing, different title, same service. We're still doing that right here in this community. recruit, recruiting, training, and retaining our foster homes, aka resource homes. Another service that we're providing, and actually, if I'm going to go back to Danielle's um initial part of her presentation when she talked about tax relief, that's a suffach program. That's because of the work that you all are doing, and we thank you for that. Our crisis assistance program, which is the top of this slide for us, this is also a suffach program. This is because of the work that you all are doing that we can step in and help mitigate crisis. Our our partner over here um from four kids mentioned what they're doing to mitigate crisis. We're also doing that work. So together we're able to have a deeper impact. We provide adult services. A lot of folks don't think about this, but as we age and we have an aging population, more and more folks are in need of services. More and more um of our elderly and disabled population need us. And those are the folks that we're serving in our adult services unit. And then really quickly, I promise I won't be before you long, Children's Services Act. This is actually an administrative function. Um, I like to bring this to your attention because we have 3.5 staff responsible for administering, overseeing, and ensuring that we are in compliance with state law for almost $4 million a year. 3.5 staff that are doing that. every day and they're doing it in excellence. We're getting audited again this year. We're getting excellent results. I promise or I won't come back until 2026. Uh lastly, but not least, community corrections. A lot of um folks don't realize this, but SUFFK is in the fifth judicial district and we uh Suffach

Social Services actually supervise probation in the fifth judicial district. So right now, if someone goes into one of the courts in our general district court or u our juvenile and domestic relations court, our office is actually the office that provides that supervision for those folks that um have to serve out probation as a part of their sentencing. So this is the part I was talking about where where Danielle's team is making my team look like they're not doing any work, but I promise you they're working really really hard. We're also seeing a jump in the numbers um for CPS and our numbers aren't as clean. um as Danielle's side of the house because we have to validate, make sure there are no duplicates, etc., etc. So, sometimes it takes us a little bit longer to get our numbers validated. So, you'll see if the fiscal year is different. I've just identified that so you know exactly what period we're talking about, but in that first column, child protective services, back in 2021, we saw 281 children. In fiscal year 2024, we served 1,138 children here in the city of Suffuk who were alleged to have been victims of abuse and neglect in our adult protective services. And that was a a 300% increase over the three-year period. In adult protective services back in 2021, we saw 377 elderly and disabled folks. In fiscal year 24, 503 elderly and disabled folks who were the victims of abuse or neglect or exploitation. That's an increase of 33%. Foster care numbers, um, again, we're doing the best we can with the same staffing levels we had from before. Our foster care numbers, unfortunately, are really increasing. So back in um fiscal year 21 over the entire course of the

calendar year we had 32 children enter and exit foster care at some point. As of calendar year 25 we are already at 68 children have come into foster care this year. Our CSA numbers again I told you that this was an administrative function. So the number of children served um back in 2022 was 67. In fiscal year 25, we were up to 87. That's a 33 30% increase in the number of of people served. I wanted to give you all the money. Um because it's important that those 3.5 people are know where every single penny goes, how we're spending it, and ensuring that we're spending it according to regulator regulations and code. Back in 21 it was $2 million. Here in 2020, I think that was 2025 numbers, we were up to $3.2 million. Our CSA office actually is responsible for both SUFFK and Olive White, who we we support um via contract. So on behalf of our director, Mr. Harry Cromer, myself, Miss Taylor, I want to thank you for the opportunity just to come before you and show you a small snapshot of who we are and what we do. I know we talked a lot about numbers, but I just want to leave you with the fact that every one of those numbers is a person. It's your child, it's your mom, it's your dad, there's someone's sister that they're beyond that number in what we do. Um, I want to additionally I want to express our thanks for the continued support of city council, the advisory board as well as the office of the city manager. Our contact information is listed. We'll be more than welcome to ask to ask any questions and further discussion.

Thank you. Okay. Thank you.

Good evening, honorable mayor, honorable vice mayor, distinguished members of council, Mr. Manager. I'm here before you this evening to give you an update on the Western Tidewater Shelter. Many of you have had the opportunity to visit the site uh over the last month or so. I know we have some more tours that are upcoming in the very near future. Uh the site, the former Regal Inn Motel located at 2361 Prudin Boulevard has about 7100 uh square feet. Uh the city acquired this property in January of 2024 via a HUD grant for a little north of $1.4 million. And that $1.4 million was was for acquisition and renovation. Then we got an additional $500,000 boost thanks to Delegate Clark who was our chief patron and Senator Jordan. uh they were able to secure $500,000 from the governor's budget as part of our 2025 legislative agenda. And this is just goes to show what happens when you have city council, city manager's office, our intergovernmental affairs manager, access point all working together for a goal. And uh city council, you unanimously voted to appropriate this money on December 3rd. And I'm just so happy to say as Mr. Jones is as well. Everything that we've done uh with this shelter project did not cost not one local single tax penny. All of this was done with state and federal funds. And that that's a feat that's so grand. We have other localities in the region saying, "How did you do that? How can we do that? What can we do?" But I mean, they can't duplicate what we have if they don't have the council that we have and the collaboration that we have with

our staff in the city manager's office and our staff in the city. I mean, it is what it is. With that money, uh we began renovation in September of 2024. In the process, we're uh creating 17 double occup double occupancy rooms plus one triple occupancy. That would make it uh 37 uh room for 37 guests. Several rooms on the first floor are ADA compliant and all bathroom fixtures on the first floor are ADA compliant. Uh, new flooring is put in, new lighting, new furniture, uh, a new decorative 8- foot high perimeter fence along with a automatic vehicular uh, gate for safety and also new uh, site landscaping, lighting. Uh, the parking lot is going to be repaved in the future. uh just a lot of things going on to make the shelter quite a wonderful space. Now, the the previous picture that you saw was an angle looking from the kitchenet area that you can see in the background. But, uh that just goes to show this is November 2025. What a difference a year makes. Uh that's a picture of the day room and you can see the kitchen area in the back with the microwaves and the refrigerators. Just to give you a little visual, that's uh what a basic room looks like. Very spacious. You see we have the barn doors to save on space so the doors won't open in and out. They slide just to maximize the space for our guests. Here's a picture of one of the bathrooms. Uh and right now we're currently working to the furniture is in the beds and some of the final furniture they're being put

in as we speak. Uh and then once that's in, we can uh prepare to rock and roll if you would speak. Um in the week of on January 12th, the week of January 12th, that's the laundry room there with the shelving. And that that's more of the the brick and mortar piece of the shelter. But when it came to planning the shelter, we knew we couldn't do it without the input of our community stakeholders. So, in February of 2025, we convened a meeting of about 20 local and regional stakeholder organizations, public, private, um, nonprofit, faith-based, to just pick their brain, their expertise, and their insight and to develop a mission statement. And the Western Tidewater shelter mission statement is, as you can see, is to offer temporary housing, person- centered services, stability, and hope that transforms lives and strengthens our western Tidewater communities. So, we want it to be a place, not a destination, just a stop along their journey to stability, to hope, and to permanent housing. Next steps. There will be a community partners open house next week by invitation only. The date and the time is omitted on purpose because we don't want massive amounts of people from the public coming and then that will disrupt the work that's going on to get the shelter prepared for January. So those of you who are invited, you know the date, you know the time. Council, if you need to be reminded, come see me. I'll be more than happy to tell you. Uh the final preparation, like I said, now is being done. The beds are in. They're just putting them together. The final pieces of furniture uh between now through January 9th with the opening date slated the week of January 12th,

2026. This has been, I must say, a huge learning experience. Learning what a low barrier uh non- congregate shelter is. A a congregate shelter is where you have a room with a whole bunch of beds, a whole bunch of people. Non- congregate, you know, two to a room or one to a room. Uh and and this is a very very important project. I can't stress enough, you know, the important work that you do. Uh this is something that you've seen, many of you seen up close and personal. Uh it's quality a quality project. Uh like I said, we couldn't have done it without you and we just, you know, just thank you for your continued support. I am here to answer any questions along with uh Mr. Gary Jones uh and to governmental affairs manager Nicole Porter and DJ Garrett who all who've all worked closely on this project. If you have any questions, feel free. If not, I will gladly walk away from the microphone.

Thank you, Mr. Felder. Uh, council, any questions or comments from Mr. Felder? Anyone else? All righty. You got off light. Z. All right. Thank you. Is it? Okay. Hearing that, that's our last speaker uh before we move on. Um, I'll ask council if they have any comments they'd like to make and council member recctor.

Um, yeah, just briefly, Mr. Mayor, I I think hearing from all these speakers tonight points out the fact how complicated an issue that homelessness and poverty in our city is and how um it's going to take several different organizations working in harmony, which I believe we have to address the problem. Uh we're probably never going to have enough resources to absolutely solve the problem. I believe in the good book it says the poor will always be among us. Um but we can do our best to mitigate what we do see with within this. And Miss McCart, do you mind coming back up? You're not going to get off quite so easy. I was just wondering um I was fortunate enough to get to tour your facility over there in Ches on Point Dexter Street and one of the things that I was really overwhelmed a little bit by was your intake office and actually the positive impact that it has on the cities such as SuffK social services and whatnot. Could you just briefly go through that because I I think that's an important element of what you guys uh do because that's something that most of us don't see. You know, our churches ask us to collect food, collect toys for Christmas and whatnot and take them. Um but that is just such a small slice of what you guys um do. So if you could just talk about that that intake stuff because I think that's critical.

And uh Councilman Recctor, I thank you because I skipped right over the housing crisis hotline. So you have given me a nice queued up a my a softball for me. Um the four kids does run the housing crisis hotline for 14 cities and counties in Hampton Roads. And our goal behind that when we answer the phone at our call center which is out of our Chesapeake facility is that we are not answering as four kids. We are answering as the service system of Hampton Roads so that a person who is experiencing a housing crisis can hopefully dial a single number and know what is available in our community today. So in SUFFK um we fielded 3,337 calls from SUFFK citizens last year. Um and that's just SUFFK. across the greater hotline region. We're we're managing about 75,000 calls a year from 45,000 households. Those are like blah blah blah numbers. It's too big to wrap your head around. Um but on a given day, we want somebody to be able to call us. Um because the system is complicated. Um, just because you are in need today does not mean that your specific family situation, your family composition, exactly where you live, your income level. All of those things factor into a very, very complicated service system in our community. So, we're delighted um really delighted. One of the big things my hotline staff says all the time is, "Man, we need a single shelter." So huge congratulations on behalf of our hotline team that are handling a lot of calls from singles where there has been nothing available. So we're really grateful to that. But that is I encourage all council members to come because it makes it very real when you stand in the room. We got a live call board. So this is sort of what regularly gives me a facial tick. I can walk in there and I can see how many calls came

in this morning. How long people have been on hold. Our goal is that people will not sit on hold longer than three minutes. Um so that if you are in crisis, you get a real human. Um and we are able to do that with about 89% of calls. But the need is real. On a typical day, we're fielding about um anywhere from 250 calls to last week on late rent day just before that little um we we um had over 700 calls hit the system. So, the need is real and the need is growing and the impact of changes at the federal level um scares the heck out of us um to see that this need may just be continuing to grow next year. Thank you for that. And again, I just want to um reiterate everybody coming to see that work. the hotline again that this intake not just to our kids but to hopefully all of us um is um is really it's where you see where the rubber hits the road. So thank you

Vice Mayor Ward. Yes. Yes. I'd just like to thank uh Mr. Homer and his staff for helping the situation that I um uh let him know about it and he was took care real fast and I think the staff did it as a pro expert they was took care of the situation. I'd like to thank him again for well job well done. Thank you

council. Any other questions or comments? Um if not I'll be brief. I just want to thank all the agencies that are here uh this evening. I've been in just about all of them and witnessed their work firsthand over the years and how it's progressed from three, four, five, six years ago the start of their clinic and the increased presence of four kids. I was just there a couple days ago. Uh it's an amazing job. Thank you for everything that you do and um I'm glad that we can support you and far as I'm concerned we will continue to support you uh because you do provide an invaluable service uh to our community. We as a government any government just is not equipped uh or have the resources. So it takes as they say in the old adage you know it takes a village. It really does take a village. And we've talked about a couple of, you know, some pretty heavy hitters tonight, but when I think about some of the agencies or groups that I've been part of, I mean, it just it filters down. You got the Geneva Shelter, Salvation Army, YMCA, the Suffach Foundation, we got our churches, we got our civic leagues. Uh, and it goes on and on. But that's basically what SUFFK is about. I mean, we're blessed that we have a community of citizens that um is very compassionate and they're willing to give back and help those uh in need that are less fortunate with them and especially this time of year. It's it's especially applicable. So, once again, thank you for everything you do. Thank you to our citizens for everything that you do. And we will move on to our next item. We will now go to uh removal of the consent agenda items and adoption of the agenda at this time. And removal of the item from the consent agenda is not necessary since there's only one item. So a motion to adopt the agenda as presented would be in order council. What's your pleasure? Council member

Recctor. Motion to motion to approve the agenda as presented. Okay, we got a motion to approve. Council member Butler Barllo. Second from council member Butler Barlo. Any discussion of the motion? Hearing none. Council members prepare to vote. Please cast your vote. Madame clerk, please record the vote.

The motion is approved by vote of 8 to zero. Uh madam clerk, do we have any agenda speakers at this time? No, sir. Hearing none, will you please present the cons consent agenda item for consideration? Consent agenda item number seven, a resolution requesting the Virginia Department of Transportation to make certain additions and deletions to the urban highway system.

Mr. Manager, would you please provide an overview? Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of council, I would draw your attention uh to the agenda package which includes form U1 entitled local assistance division VOTE request for street additions and deletions for student street payment sections 32.2-319 code of Virginia. This document and associated maps identifies 24 street sections that now meet the requirements for additions to the state urban highway system. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Manager. Uh at this time, if there's no questions about the item, a motion would be in order to approve the consent agenda as presented. Council member Williams.

Move to approve. Motion for approval from Council Member Williams. Do I have a second? Vice Mayor Ward. Second. Second for Vice Mayor Ward. Is there any discussion of the motion? Hearing none, council members, prepare to vote. Please cast your vote. Madame clerk, kindly record the vote.

Motion is approved by vote of 8 to zero. We do have several public hearings this evening. The first one is an ordinance to reszone and amend the official zoning map of the city of Suffach that change the zoning from RL residential low density zoning district to RLM residential low medium density conditional zoning district for property located off Sweetwood Drive zoning map 25 parcel 74 account number 25400 46. This is RZN 2024 3 conditional. Mr. Manager, please provide an overview.

Mayor, vice mayor, members of council, Kevin Wine, director of planning and community development, will provide the staff report.

Thank you, Mr. Manager. Mayor, vice mayor, members of council, as the mayor stated, this is a resoning request for property uh located just off of Pitchko Road and Sweetwood Drive from RL, that's our residential low medium, low density zoning district to the RLM zoning district. That's our residential low medium density zoning district. That equates uh to a density modification from 1 and a half units per acre to 2.9 units per acre. Um the property is located adjacent to the Route 58 bypass um at the end of Sweetwood Drive um just off of Pitchko Road and is designated in the 2045 comprehensive plan for use as suburban neighborhood. Uh the site is 10.61 acres in size. Um about six acres a little north of six acres of the site is actually developable acreage. um about four four and a half acres uh consists of either um wetlands or or RPA features resource protection area in the Chesapeake Bay overlay. As stated um the RL allows for a density by right of one and a half units per acre. Um the RLM, which they're requesting, would allow this to increase to 2.9 units per acre. Um in the RL, the site could yield nine units by right today. Um, if reszoned to the RLM, uh, it would get an increased density of six units. Uh, here we have a conceptual layout showing, um, the extension of Sweetwood Drive that would serve the proposed 15 units. Um the developer has provided us an illustration of what a few of the homes would look like on some of those more constrained sites uh due to the presence of some environmental features um depicting that they could fit on the

site. This is a conditional resoning and the developer has provided some voluntary profers in support of their application. That includes uh the maximum number of units being profer at 15 total. uh the advancement of school capacity at Elephants Fork and Kings Fork high schools for the six additional units and um the minimum square footage for every single story unit uh being set at 2,000 square ft that increasing to 2200 square ft for twotory units. All homes being sighted with Hardy Plank siding. Um, all units having covered front porches and then front-loaded garages will incorporate window openings. The planning commission at their meeting last month, November 18th, voted 6 to2 to recommend denial of this application before you this evening. Uh, staff has reviewed the application and we are recommending its approval to you all this evening. That concludes my presentation on this item. I'll be happy to stand by at the conclusion of the public hearing. Should you have any questions?

Thank you, Mr. Mine. Uh before we open the public hearing, madam clerk, will you please explain the timing system? This is a public hearing and each speaker is asked to provide their name and their address. We will have a 10-minute period for the proponents, a 15-minute period for those in opposition, and then an additional 5 minutes for a rebuttal.

This is a public hearing. Will the first speaker please come forward and provide their name and address and that's to speak in favor of this ordinance. Good evening, Mayor Duman, uh, Vice Mayor Ward, members of city council, uh, and staff. Uh, my name is Grady Palmer. My business address is 222 Central Park Avenue, uh, in Virginia Beach. Um, I'm here tonight. I was not representing this applicant at the planning commission. I I sat and actually watched uh the the public hearing. Um, and it struck me at listening to the planning commission that there was a major miscommunication or or something was lost in translation. And you know, one of the things I think that happens on occasion is that applicants propose uh a reasonzoning in a condition that's better in my view than the byite situation. So right now the byite zoning allows nine homes with no profers. So what the applicant is was was trying to do uh at the planning commission and I think has has has has since has clarified that with communications with uh the lake me estates homeowners association uh is to propose uh something that will benefit them. And so the the major component of that benefit uh is to include a park site at the end of the culde-sac. And so you can't really see that on the the site plan that's being displayed right now, but at the end of the culde-sac there, uh just to the right of the screen, uh the applicant is is intending to uh preserve a private park site so the waterfront element isn't a part of someone's backyard. Uh so what he's trying to do is to create a community uh asset for for his proposal but also for uh the Lake Meat Estates uh community as well.

And so you know as I listen to the planning commission and I know since we've worked since then that you know I view this this outcome uh is much better than the byite scenario. And so that's why I agreed to present this item on his behalf tonight because I I I believe that what's on what's before you tonight is a better outcome for everybody involved. Uh the applicant Lake Meet Estates, anybody walking, uh you know, pedestrians walking to the park. Um, you know, if this were to be by right, most likely, uh, the waterfront area would be in someone's backyard and, you know, that would not be something that people could enjoy. Uh, and I I think that would be a real loss. And so, um, we're available for questions. The applicant is here. I I believe there is a, uh, an officer with the Lake Meet Estates Homeowners Association, uh, here to speak in support of the project tonight. And so there's been a lot of work that's been done uh to try to clarify the intent and to uh make sure that everybody is operating on the same uh page and understands exactly what's being proposed because I think once that happens uh I I think people will see this as a benefit. So if there's any opposition here tonight um or there's any hesitation uh I would urge the council to delay this so we can do more work in the community if there's if there's more work that's needed. uh if there's any uh any missing elements from the profers, we'll certainly update the profers. Uh but I I I I believe that this is better than what can be done by right and it will be done. I mean, one way or the other, nine homes will be built with no profers or this proposal if if approved will be built. So, so again, I urge the council if there's any hesitation, if there's any opposition, we'll certainly be willing to delay this to meet with people. Um we think it's that important. So, with that, I'll stand by for any questions uh that you have of me. Thank you.

Thank you. We have our next speaker to speak in favor of this ordinance.

Good evening, council. My name is and Mr. Mayor, my name is Chip Worth. I'm the applicant for this application. And I just first off I guess owe an apology I guess for not doing a proper job at the planning commission and hopefully we have gotten this right. I don't know if any of y'all have ever had the opportunity to take a look at this site but that point in my opinion where the park site is proposed is one of the most beautiful vistas I think in the city of Suffach and I we haven't seen that. We would like to keep that to at a place where the public can enjoy it. Um, I'd like to stand by for any questions. I would also like to point out that this is a project of pride for us and I want to thank the HOA and Jennifer um who'll be speaking in a second in support for their patience and dealing with us and trying to put together the package that you have in front of you tonight. So, thank you and I stand by for any questions.

Thank you, sir. have our next speaker to speak in favor of this ordinance.

Hi, my name is Jennifer Cawan. I live at 2047 Sweetwood Drive in SuffK. Um I actually live in the the grade out culde-sac that you see up there on the plan. Um there were some miscommunications in the beginning. Um, I think there's going to be a little bit of growing pains just due to the nature of construction and that seems to be what the most concern is with all of our residents. But there have been a lot of communications between us and u Mr. Worth and uh we have come to an agreement of what will be beneficial for the neighborhood and we are in support for them the reasonzoning. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you ma'am. We have our next speaker to speak in favor of this ordinance. Is there anyone else present who would like to speak in favor? Hearing none. Do we have anyone who would like to speak in opposition at this time? Good evening, city council. as I have done so many times before. I've told you my name is Kelly Hingler and I live at 9345 Eclipse Drive. Um, this is not an opposition, so I don't want a pucker factor going on behind all these good safians here who've worked with this developer, but it is a point that I do want to support the denial that was brought to you by the planning commission. It wasn't about a park and I do not see said park in the profers. I read the entire application. The park does need to be in the prof. So, this may need to be held over. not telling you your business. Two, what we're having happen along all of the RPA in Safa, quite unfortunately, is people who come into develop in good faith. We know they're doing it in good faith. And then persons buying those lots and clearing those lots of trees all the way down to the water. And then who is supposed to police that once it's sold? It's not the developer unless they're maintaining an HOA holding in it. and still they're busy on to the next project. I will give you an example that is not Lake me which also confounds me because that RPA buffer is actually held together by the owner of Lake Meade. Where is the city of Portsouth and Norolk coming up here for these or at least presenting themselves on paper as we continue to encroach into our drinking water reservoirs? It is a question that must be asked procedurally of our good esteemed members.

We cannot continue to clear away the canopy and declare that we have done our work. And quite unfortunately as we welcome so many new people to suffoc welcome. Welcome. They don't know. They do not know that that RPA buffer yes they can maintain seeds of trees of a certain size as long as it blocks their view. But no, undoubtedly over and over again what's happened is a subcontra comes in tears everything to the frame down to the water which means that that land is no longer protected by root systems and trees. We're not trying to be environmentally coming up here kumbaya throwing a parade. It is there for a reason. Virginia leads the way as an agricultural soil conservation, water conservation state in all of the United States and we are proud of it. But somehow it becomes unhinged and we don't see written into contracts for these properties and these lots that there is a clear understanding made to if you accept a deed and title, you acquire that, we respect you. We thank you. we welcome you to your home that you do not have the right to clear the property such that that land erodess over time and you have less to be taxed. Let's be honest, the state loves us but they don't love us that much. Okay? They want the land intact. They want the water intact. They want the shorelines intact. They want our water quality to be maintained. It's not a kumbaya. Now I will say to you in one final note that what's happened unlike on a lake but has happened to and they've done great work out there okay on our peninsula but what happened was what was offered by right in a planning and they brought in pretty intensely crammed in 70 houses behind Cedar Point and the people over in Eclipse are watching on Blehorn Creek as the good persons who

paid a good dollar for the good home have moved in and cleared down a steep cliff of trees and that water is going into Ble Corn Creek and you think it doesn't matter. Watch what happens when things become not just silted in but piled in in a wetland so that the water starts coming higher and higher on your property for safety, risk management, harm reduction, soil and water conservation, all the check marks of our government. Nobody is trying to regulate or restrict people, but we need better common sense. And to me, this project needs to be very clearly delineated that it is clearly clearly understood for these lots increase to get this 15 houses instead of nine at a lower density that we welcome our neighbors so they don't find themselves in a situation where a subcontractor they hired went out and cleared everything and now they get a $10,000 penalty from DEEQ. It's not neighborly. So, I hope that that adds to the context and content and how much love we have of our city and the good works that we do do here. But for your consideration, I don't see any of that included in the application. Thank you and good night. Okay, we have our next speaker to speak in opposition to this ordinance. Do we have anyone else who would like to speak in opposition? Hearing none, we will move move to our rebuttal period, which is five minutes. Yeah, thank thank you, mayor. So, as you heard from um from Jennifer, that we we do have an agreement um with the the Lake me estates uh community regarding the park site. So, it's a private park, so it's not something that we uh that we can that we can profer, but that is important. It is important to to the applicant, but it's also important to them. So, we we did do an agreement uh to make that available. Uh I and I think to her to the to the speaker's point this condition is even better for the environment because you know what

happens with these when these things become backyards when the waterfront uh is consumed in people's backyards that's when bad things start to happen or can happen. And so with this being preserved as a as a private park site with trees natural areas you know that that actually preserves the environmental condition that she's concerned about. So I think even again this condition is much better than the by right condition even on the environmental level because the the the waterfront is not completely encircled in someone's backyard. And so I think for all of those reasons I think you should you should approve the the the reasonzoning. Uh it I think everybody benefits uh here if this is the condition uh of development as opposed to what they can do by right. Uh and and and it's not a threat. I'm not. It's just the fact that either the nine homes or this will will be developed. And we think this will be developed. The applicant has established a good relationship with Lake Meade Estates. Uh and that relationship will continue uh to to uh to develop and uh I think will be a good working relationship there. And so I do ask for your approval tonight and I thank you very much.

Thank you. We have anyone else who would like to speak during the rebuttal period? Hearing none. This public hearing is now closed. Council questions, comments, or a motion.

All right, Council Member Johnson. I guess my Ryan, come up front. My my real concern is the planning commission, the planning commission's meeting. Wasn't there discussion that there was a 100 foot buffer problem with the houses that when the houses would be built? Can you get around the houses to go put a deck on in the back or get vehicles around the house or talk to me about that just a little bit?

Yeah, that was that's a great question. That was one of the planning commission's primary considerations in reaching their conclusion. Um, this being a cluster subdivision, uh, there's no minimum lot size. They're going to be smaller lots. Um but there's no requirement that a certain amount of the lot be free of critical area. So uh in this case with those smaller lots you'll have um in particular you can see the the four lots that they highlighted on this conceptual exhibit um um about a third to a half of the lot um consists of what is Chesapeake Bay resource protection area. um meaning that there's uh pretty little footprint for the house um and um any owners to maintain a backyard um should they wish to build a deck in the future or a patio or something of that nature. uh because any encroachment into the RPA on lots created now um would ultimately uh require an Ches Bay exception application to be made um in which the planning commission is the ultimate decider uh for those

and that would have to come back through us every time somebody wanted to make an exception to it. Correct. the um the planning commission is the approval authority for Ches Bay extension.

And I'm just I'm just throwing this out because we have a pretty darn good planning commission and why they approved this this way from what I was told was for that very reason and that um I don't have a problem with I to be honest with you I know the lot well it's beautiful. As a matter of fact I hate to see these houses in a row. It' be great to take them and put them around the hillside. I don't agree with the developer that um you can't put beautiful houses on the water. Every house in that community in the Lake Me area is beautiful and they're all facing the water wherever they can. I I really don't have a problem with it. I just don't I don't know why you would want to put 15 houses somewhere where it's been nine have worked ever since the beginning of all of that development. And I do worry about down the road how it's going to look. Um I like the park idea. I think the park is an amazing thing. But is that profit and is there some maintenance for the park? I mean is that part of this deal? this the park

uh park was not profered by the applicant as part of their application. Yeah. See, I I'm I'm a little wary of that. I know these are good developers. I don't question that. They're good people. I've talked with them. But I do kind of am concerned about the fact that it's not proper and who's going to maintain it. Is the city going to maintain it or is the neighborhood going to figure out a way to maintain it? I I personally would like to see this come back a little more to be refined. I'm not real happy with it coming to us this way. It's my humble opinion, you know. Um, we don't want to create a problem before there is a problem. Um, but anyway, okay, that's all I've got to say. I just it just bothered me the way it was presented and like I said, it's a nice community. Thank you,

council. Any other questions or comments? Council member Butler Barlow.

Thank you, Mayor. Um, I just have a couple of questions. So, I I have concerns about the RPA. you know, who's going to regulate that? Um, clearly the four lots, they're not going to be able to have backyard. Same thing that council member Johnson is saying, you know, are these folks going to, you know, have these houses and then come back to us and want a variance to encroach on the RPA setback and we don't really want to create a problem. Um, so I have a concern about that. The other thing in the profer statement, maximum number of units profered, 15 total, advancement of school capacity at Elephants Fork and Kings Fork High School for the six additional units. So the nine by rate units have no profers and so only the six are going to be profered. So we're not getting profers on 15 units. Okay. All 15, but we didn't proper.

Okay. The way that it's written, it's confusing because it sounds like we're still not going to proper.

Okay. That that that makes me more happy because it's Yeah. So, the other question that I have is and and again, I appreciate the homeowners association um Jennifer that came and spoke. Um I was at the planning commission meeting and you know it was pretty clear that the homeowners association was not in favor of this. So is this a is everybody on board and we sent a representative or is there division in the homeowners association? I mean what's the is the support entire I guess is what I'm asking because before it was um it was not well supported. So,

so initially there were um we had had a meeting with the builder um both neighborhoods because there's Lake Me Estates which is I'm the representative from I'm their uh HOA president and then there was the other side of the neighborhood which is me point and and during that meeting we had representatives from both neighborhoods there that brought up their concerns. Um, I individually spoke with my members of my community. A lot of what everybody brought to me were concerns about the construction taking down of the trees, the noise be uh pollution coming becoming greater, um, the traffic going back and forth, the increased uh, cars on the road. um which is kind of what I was alluding to when I came up there that that's going to be the case no matter if it's nine or if it's 15.

Um I kind of attribute that to the growing pains of just something being developed.

Um we've been a lot of back and forth with what uh we would want from the developer. We have open lines of communication with them. Um, initially I think that stuff that was told to us during that meeting was not listed in the paperwork and that's what threw us. Um, since then we've had uh Zoom calls and meetings and we've discussed uh our concerns. They've discussed reasons why they could have um some of the items that we had listed that they said would not be possible and they gave the explanation for it u versus just blanket saying they can't do it. Um what we ultimately decided um that they were going to put the park in their uh neighborhood and allow the residents of the Lake Meates access to that park um that we would be able to um use it.

Um and then we had talked about uh replanting of some trees to uh mitigate that noise pollution uh once construction is kind of complete. Um based on the fact that we've had this been dialogue and we've been uh talking together. The neighborhood to be honest, I don't get a lot of uh feedback from the residents. I put out the the notices. I send communications and I I don't get a lot of participation. So, um I'm kind of having to make the decision uh for our neighborhood based on I think what would be best. Um and since we have this open communication, we are willing to support the the in this initiative.

Okay. Thank you. And you actually live on the culde-sac. Yes, ma'am. Um I if you look on the um the screen, the grade out culde-sac at the beginning, there's a very long driveway. That's that's on my home. Okay, I see it. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. That those are my only questions. Okay. Council, any other questions, comments? Council member Recctor. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um Mr. Mr. Palmer, if you don't mind. Yes, sir.

I I'm assuming that if these extra six lots are approved and this general layout is adhered to, anybody that buys a lot is going to be given a copy of the survey of the area in their lot that it's going to clearly indicate where that 100 foot RPA buffer is.

Yeah. And if there's any concern about that, I mean, we want people to respect the RPA. Um, if there's any concern about that, Mr. Johnson or any on the council. I mean, we're happy to profer anything that we need to do uh to make sure that people understand that they are they are they are they have RPA on their property and they may have they have may have restrictions because of that. Um and if there's any any uh discomfort with that, I would suggest that you continue this and let us work on that because I I I I agree we want that to be as clearly defined as we can. Um, and so yes, the the I I believe the survey would show the RPA, but um I can't say stand here right now and tell you absolutely 100% sure, but if we if we need clarity on that, let give us a deferral. We will we will work with with staff to get a proper written uh so it is clear that the RPA affects those properties.

Yeah. Agree. Absolutely agree.

Get get your ducks in a row. Exactly. Would you like to make a motion to that effect? I'm making that a motion to that effect that we ask for a deferral until we can take care of the 100 foot and the the park. 30. And how long do you need? How long do you need? Need a specific date? We could go 30 days. 30 days. So, we need a specific date in January. What's that, Mr. City Attorney? I'm sorry. 21st. January 21st. So, your motion would be to table this until the 21st. Table this until the January 21st meeting. Can we get a motion on the floor to table to the 21st? Do we have a second, Council Member? Right.

So, it sounds like we need to fix also the language. I think it needs to be cleared up for the schools as well because the way that it reads is ambiguous. So the RPA include the park and we need to clean up the language for the schools to make it very clear and make the schools very clear. I'll include that. Thank you. Okay. I have a question for the city. I'm sorry. Let me get council member Bennett first. I'll just second his motion to

Okay, we got second from council member Bennett. Uh is there any other further discussion from council? Um, if not, I'd like to ask our city attorney mention uh there is an ability to profer the park. Is that correct? um if it's going to be turned over to the city, yes. But otherwise there's really no reason for the profer because um that's going to be a private it's as I understand the presentation it's a private park for the homeowners association of the existing neighborhood and the homeowner association if it's a separate homeowner association of the new neighborhood. Can the proper be to require an agreement be reached with the HOA and that as part of the application process?

The city has generally not gotten involved in the private affairs of homeowners associations. Okay. I'm just trying. So if you have a profer to understand what a profer is a profer is an actual zoning law which means that staff will be tasked with enforcing that law.

Okay. So it sounds like to me that the only thing that could actually be profered may be some of the landscaping issues, the 2015 gallon trees, anything else that you've agreed to do for the association and then maybe when you come back that there is a formal agreement that has been executed. Not that it would be required, but I think everyone up here would like to see it. Yes, sir. Yeah. And we we would just profer the site the site plan that I think that'd be the way to do it.

Mr. Attorney, that's okay. I'm just trying I just want to make sure that when you come back, you know, we we've got an end product that is going to address the issues. It's something that, you know, we can accept. uh in regards to notification on the RPA u um but ask the city attorney again what options are there to address the concerns uh in regards um to the RPA requirements and notification you you could I mean if the developer wants to profer that they're going to put that in their covenants or in their or as a deed restriction you can do that again you're creating a situation where our staff may have to go and review stuff and enforce. Um, so that's really up to council whether you're going to just accept what's presented to you or if you want to have staff enforce that provision.

Well, I think the RPA is enforcable one way or the other with an agreement if it's encroached upon. So the encroachment, yes, but requiring notice is something different. So, so what I think what I've heard is that you want to make sure that there's something other than an outline on their survey. Correct. That moves us into something that staff would have to enforce. So that would be one up to the developer what language developer wants to propose to city council and two whether city council wants to take on that responsibility.

Okay. So the suggestion would be when you come back to have the RPA issue addressed to some extent and uh same way with the park maybe have a an agreement negotiated with HO with the HOA. Uh the couple of other items that you mentioned here. Um I think um I do not see where Yeah, the Hardy plank has been the hardy plank is addressed in the profers. Deemphasizing y'all garages to be on the side of the house. I guess that takes care of deemphasizing the garages, front porches. I didn't see front porches in the proper statement either. So that would have to be included. I said you incorporate everything in the agreement that you have here that you can along with those two things that will apply to the extent that you can asurances that the RPA won't um nobody will violate the RPA setbacks. Um and that's all I got. Uh council, we got a motion on the floor to table this until January 21st. Is there any further discussion hearing? None. Council members, prepare to vote. Please cast your vote. Where am I?

We're going to roll call this, please. Council member Bennett. Yes. Council member Butler Barlo. Council member Johnson. Council member Recctor. Council member Williams. Council member Wright. Vice Mayor Ward. Yes. Mayor Duman. Yes. The motion is approved by a vote of 8 to zero. Let's go on the next one. Okay. Our next item is an ordinance to amend section 31-419 of the unified development ordinance of the city of Suffach, Virginia. This is OTAA 20258. Mr. Manager, please provide an overview. Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of council. Kevin Wine, director of planning and community development will provide the overview on the text amendment.

Thank you again, Mr. Manager, mayor, vice mayor, members of council. Uh this is an item we briefed you on not uh terribly long ago, but um if you recall uh a little under a year ago, there was an application um within our mixeduse development overlay uh zoning district um in which uh they ran into some problems modifying profers that uh they had established at the onset of that development. um it's not unheard of for uh larger tracks of land to be subdivided, ultimately sold off to uh different ownership interests and ultimately they um have, you know, um could disagree um over potential items that um that may regulate the district. So with that being said, we've looked at our um MUD regulations and we are doing two things um with this. One, we are establishing a process for um existing mixeduse developments that have been approved and what the process would be uh moving forward to amend um the master plan for the development. Um and then secondly, we are taking a uh we have looked at mixeduse developments that um are proposed in the future and um how they would identify um um a master plan amendment. So with that being said, we are um adding three sections here, three subsections uh to new section K modification of the mixeduse development overlay district. Um generally um the master plan design guidelines and other elements um shall only be amended, extended or modified um by approval of city council through the same process. for existing MUDs that would um permission would come through at least twothirds of the current property owners that make up the district um within the

overlay or uh written consent of the property owners association um for the mud for proposed MUDs um applications for a mixeduse development overlay um they shall identify within their design guidelines as part of uh the development, the procedures that um would allow them to obtain property owner agreement in pursuit of an MUD master plan design guidelines or other elements that make up that application. Um so and just to recap um for existing MUDs they could modify their um design guidelines um or master plan through a twothirds majority of the existing property owners or um with the consent of the property owners association. For those that are proposed um they will identify the procedures to modify those elements within the design guidelines that accompany their application. The planning commission reviewed these changes at their November 18th meeting and they're bringing it to you with their recommendation of approval by a vote of 8 to zero. That concludes my presentation on this item. I'll be happy to stand by at the conclusion of the public hearing for questions.

Thank you, Mr. Wine. Before we open a public hearing, Madam Clerk, will you please explain the timing system? This is a public hearing and each speaker is asked to provide their name and their address and will receive three minutes to offer their comment. This is a public hearing. Will the first speaker please come forward and provide their name and address? We have anyone present who would like to speak to this ordinance? Hearing none. This public hearing is now closed. Council ordinance has been presented for your consideration. What is your pleasure? Council member Williams. Move for approval.

Get a motion for approval from Councilman Williams. Council member Richtor second that motion.

We have a second from Council Member Recctor. Do we have any discussion of the motion? Um hearing none. Before we vote, I would just like to say this actually goes back u and the catalyst behind this change was an ordinance that we considered uh MUD uh reszoning back in January and it went contrary to the UDO but it was passed by this body uh after looking at it because we have uh the discretion to do that but once we've looked at it We we realized there there was some type of anomaly in the UDO the way it was which didn't allow for any option. So it has been through the process of recognizing that. So we don't basically put ourselves or the applicant in the same position. Uh it went through the process where it went to the planning commission or ordinances and they voted on it and now it's coming to us and it's completed. So the system does work. And with that being said, we got a motion on the floor for approval. If there is no further discussion, please prepare to vote. Please cast your vote. Madame clerk, kindly record the vote.

Motion is approved by a vote of 8 to zero. Our next public hearing is ordinance to reszone and amend the official zoning map of the city of Suffach to change the zoning from B2 general commercial zoning district to RU18 residential urban 18 conditional zoning district for property located at 1700 in 1802 North Main Street. This is zoning map 25, parcel 45a, and zoning map 26E, parcel F, asterric G, Astric PT, F, Aster J, and add conditions for the parcel zoned MUD, mixeduse development overlay district, zoning map 25, parcel 45E, account numbers 2530662000, 25306710 0, and 25400181. 10. This is RZN 20254 conditional. Uh before the city manager provides an overview of the item, I have an announcement. Um I may have a personal interest in the transaction identified as resoning request RZN 20254 because I have a personal interest in the applicant's business NVR incorporated. Therefore, I will not participate in any action relating to this resoning request. Vice Mayor Ward will be taking over as the presiding officer for this item at this time. A motive would be in order to extend a

public hearing to have 20 minute period for proponent, 30 minute period for those who opposition and then a additional 10 minutes for rebuttal. The motion is in order. What is the pleasure of the city council?

Counc I move to approve the extending of the public comment time. You got approve council recctor and I'll I'll second.

Got a second for Councilman Johnson. Is there any discussion of the motion? With no discussion of the motion, member of council, please prepare to vote. Member of council, please cast a vote. Madam Madam clerk, please record the vote.

The motion is approved by vote of seven to zero. Madam manager, please provide an overview of the item.

Vice Mayor, members of council, uh Kevin Weine, planning director and community development will provide a staff overview. Once again, thank you, Mr. Manager, uh, Vice Mayor, members of council. This is a project you all are, uh, familiar with. Uh, we've, uh, presented to you all, uh, several times now, and, uh, not much has changed since our last presentation to you all at your second meeting in November. Uh, so I'll try to be brief with you all this evening. Uh but just as a refresher, this is a resoning request for three parcels located along North Main Street, uh very near downtown, right along the the Nansman River. Um from B2, um one of those parcels is um zoned MUD, small portion owned by the EDA. And um that parcel would get profers um or additional profers um but you would reszone the B2 property um a good portion of it um to RU8. Uh the property is identified um within our comprehensive plan um as two land uses commercial corridor along the frontage um and then um um multif family neighborhood towards the rear. The site does consist of 89 acres. Like I said, it's located along North Main Street. Immediately south of the OBC Place development. Like I said, it's currently zoned B2. A small portion um of the EDA EDA property to the north is zoned MUD. That was part of the OBC Place resoning. The applicant in this case is requesting to reszone 72 acres of the site to RU18. And this would allow for the construction of 497 residential units to include 329 town homes and 168 age restricted multif family units. 17 acres would be preserved as B2. This would allow for commercial and office use along North

Main Street, a waterfront marina, clubhouse, and a potential restaurant at the southeast corner along the Nansman River. This is a conditional reasonzoning and the applicant has provided uh some profers in support of the application. Um we'll go through a few of those. The architectural elevations uh have been profered by the applicant. I'll show you those. Uh road improvements as outlined within the traffic impact analysis. The execution of a road maintenance agreement with the economic development authority for 6.6 6 acres of common open space uh that they will um hold in perpetuity as a park along the frontage on North Main Street. Um a new profer uh that has been submitted uh since we last discussed this with you all uh relates to phasing. Uh so the applicant has agreed to um a phasing schedule as it relates to the non-aggerrestricted units. Um so those not uh age restricted um would come online no earlier than 2028 um in which 100 certificates of occupancy uh could be pulled. Um that continues in 2029 with 100 uh those units being eligible for certificate of occupancy. 2030 uh continues once again um with 100 COS being um eligible and then um the last 29 units could come online in 2031. Uh here we have a an exhibit that shows you the breakdown um of the zoning classifications as proposed by the applicant as requested. uh the the reddish areas, those would be uh preserved as B2. And then you have the RU18 zoning district as proposed making up the um the balance of the property. Um that's orange.

Uh we do have a conceptual layout as provided by the applicant. It's not been profered, but uh this does give you a good idea of um how the developer has conceptualized um the site. Uh you can see the um commercial uses there on the the smaller frontage along North Main Street and then the property fans out and that is where you get into the uh town home units and the multif family. A key portion of this application is um the applicant's profers as it relates to school impacts. Uh so in this case uh the applicant has profered the conveyance of a 2.3 acre site and office building uh valued at 6.2 $27 million for the future use of Suffach public schools administration building. The property would be conveyed in lie of advancing capacity for the schools impacted by the development. Uh in this case uh specifically impacts to Hillpoint Elementary School and Kings Fork High School uh would be offset through um advancement of capacity at a total cost of $4.7 uh million dollars. So in this case the value of the site exceeds that amount um that would be realized should the applicant um instead advance capacity through normal means um which is paying um per student value on the student number of students anticipated to be generated. Um the CIP uh the capital improvements plan does include a $22 million project for the construction of a new uh school admin building. Um so this uh does address an immediate um capital improvement project. Here we have some of the elevations provided um in the pattern book provided by the applicant uh that depict the town homes and the multif family dwellings proposed. We have some additional town homes uh elevations here

and some more. Uh the planning commission at uh their meeting of October 21st uh voted 7 to1 to um approve a resolution recommending this application with their approval before you all this evening with the profers as offered. Uh staff has evaluated this application thoroughly and we are recommending its approval as well with those profers. That concludes my presentation on this item. I'll be happy to stand by at the conclusion of the public hearing. Thank you. Before the open of the public hearing, madam clerk, explain the timing system.

This is a public hearing and each speaker is asked to provide their name and their address. We will have a 20inut period for the proponents, a 30 minute period for those in opposition, and then an additional 10 minutes for rebuttal. All right, this is a public hearing. Will the first speaker in favor please come forward and provide your name and address? Good evening. My name is Melissa Venibal. My office address is 5857 Harbor View Boulevard in Suffach, Virginia. Um, good evening uh vice mayor, city manager, council folks. I think tonight's presentation that we started the evening with is um really opens our eyes to the amount the depth of work that you do and I think a deep thank you is in order. Um it's it's hard to imagine the the array of items that you have to look at on a daily basis and I thank you for your service to to my city. I'd like to begin with some clarification to misinformation that I've read online. So I will start with this idea that the site is proposed or the site is currently a B2 site. That's a commercial property and it we have B1 and B2. B2 is more intense of a of a um zoning design designation than B1. Of many of the B2 permitted uses, mixeduse dwellings is one of those. They are defined as dwellings located above the ground floor of an institutional civic office or retail use. that's in the definitions in the ordinance. Examples of this are the Gallery at Godwin, which I was um had the pleasure of working on. It was developed at 28 dwelling units per acre. It's been a great project, I think, for downtown SuffK. Um but understand the density that 28 dwelling units per acre um on a B2 currently zone site. You that did not

come to reszoning because it was a byite development. Another one is the Bridgeport development um on Bridge Road in SuffK which I think is at about 20 dwelling units per acre currently. I think that has the ability to expand further but um I just wanted to give you an example of what B2 existing zoning is. Um we'd had we'd explored this option for B2 development on the site because that's part of our due diligence to do that. Correct. um if for some reason if if we can't get this passed tonight, we had to understand could we develop the site as a B2 project or property and that was discussed at planning commission. Um the difference and the reason I wanted to point that out is a lot of the reasonings that we look at um we're comparing an agricultural piece of land or a wooded piece of property and what that would be to a new resoning. That's not what we're doing tonight. Tonight we're comparing a B2 property to what we're proposing. So So let's pause there. Another misinformation or or information that I read that wasn't accurate or I think got confused is a MUD or a mixeduse development would be a reasonzoning request. We are not asking for that. But we did also at the very beginning of this process, we did explore that option and that option didn't work for us specifically. It didn't work for us because it wouldn't allow us to save property up front. It wouldn't have allowed us to save property in the rear and it wouldn't allowed us to save the building on site. And that that's we could have maybe worked in the building on site, but it wouldn't allow us to save some of those other elements specifically because a mixeduse development requires that jobs to housing ratio. So, we would have had to force on this site a certain number of jobs to meet the housing that we need to have on the site um to create the density and make it economically feasible. So, I hope that's clarified

some of the information that we've all read online. Um but I wanted to make sure that that was all clear. So, we explo explored those options. What we landed on is what's in front of you today. some of the property being preserved as B2 and then a portion of the property being reszoned to residential. The specific reason to do that was for preservation of the park up front, for preservation of the admin building, the VOTE admin building, and for preservation of a portion of the property to the rear so we could provide a public road back to that property to the rear. Um, and we'll and we'll get into that a little bit further. It was optimal for us to do to to present this resoning as we do, preserving some B2 land and introducing a residential resoning because it allows us to provide diverse product types to be built in phases which allow homes to be for sale. What you see in the B2 developments that I pointed out, Bridgepoint and Gallery Gadwin, is they're both multifamily rental projects. There's not they're great. They're there. We need those, but that's not what we were looking to do for this particular property. So, let's get let's talk about the existing parcel. The existing parcel redevelop is a redevelopment of a brown field. It falls within the IDA or intensely developed area boundary which is about a mile from downtown. The site has been envisioned for growth and redevelopment for years. According to smart growth principles, redevelopment prevents sprawl, conserves undeveloped land, utilizes existing infrastructure, boosts local economies, and creates healthier and more vibrant communities. I've had three opportunities beginning in 2009 to look at this property and each time or each time has allowed me to refine and revise the approach. For clarification, this is the first time we've brought this property through a reasonzoning and to a public hearing.

Again, that was some misinformation I think I read online. The concept is different than any of the other concepts I've looked at previously. The preservation of trees, the preservation of the existing VOTE building, and the proposed water access are new to this particular developer and this application. The proposed park and tree preservation along Main Street allows for the same view you see today to be maintained. Many of the significant mature trees will be preserved in a park-like setting and maintained by the property association. The existing VOTE administration building would be demolished in any other proposal I looked at, but my client allowed me to explore the idea of reuse. This certainly has been unconventional and a more difficult proposal than simply offering a school profer school profer dollars. But I truly believe the preservation of this building provides an incredible opportunity. As a parent of SUFFK public school students, the net positive for schools with this donation of this building and potential to relocate or reallocate millions of dollars in the CIP is an enormous win in my humble apparent as a parent of SUFFK public school students. Conversely, if this site is developed by Wright and a mixeduse dwelling building are placed here along with other commercial growth or commercial building, there is no offset to Suffach public school impacts. In the past several months, I've heard the school board prioritize projects, noting the admin building, Elevens Fork, and Ansman River are top priorities. Please, yes, please. This is so important to us as parents. A one-time building land donation as opposed to profers collected over a course of the development is a much more valuable asset to our city. Another priority for this proposal is access

access to the water. First of all, that's a that's a big deal. It's ideal. It's been talked about since 2009. Could we make it happen? This is the first time I've had a developer say yes, let's make it happen. we've provided through this property um along kind of along where the um Ford dealership is, you see a long public road. There's no driveway accesses to that. There's not houses facing it with lots of cutthroughs. That's a public road that takes you back to the water where you can hopefully there will be a restaurant building. There's parking and a boardwalk along the water. That's public access for our community, not just for this neighborhood. That's a big win as far as I'm concerned. Where else can we get to the water on this side of town? Further, the property currently has two access points from Main Street. Our proposed plan will consolidate our on-site entry to one central location, eliminating an access point onto Main Street and providing an expanded ingress egress from the existing Memorial Drive to the site. Additional turn lanes a signalized intersection will be constructed by this developer for this project. The extension of Memorial Drive will allow for a parallel roadway to Main Street. Res residents will also utilize Louise Obese Lane providing interconnectivity for pedestrian and vehicular traffic and the opportunity for true downtown type development. Imagine downtown Suffach with downtown development. This is our opportunity to provide a true mix of uses where we can walk to existing retail stores and restaurants from our place of business or our home and not have to get in our vehicle. In summary, dedication of a park area, public access to the water, a building donated to the city to complete a priority SPS project and free up CIP dollars for other priority projects is a win for all of us. Tonight we are discussing reuse of a site in our

central core district that provides the opportunity for connectivity, walkability, diverse housing and boost our downtown economy and vitality. I kindly ask for your support as both a representative of this project but most importantly as a parent of Suffach public schools. Tonight you can provide a major sorry for my heart I apologize. This is a major advancement to SUV public schools and I ask for your support and I'll stand by.

Hello. Good evening. Uh my name is Adam Medbower, 556 Rivergate Road, Chesapeake, Virginia. and I'm here uh representing NVR the applicant. Good evening, Vice Mayor Lord, city manager and council men and women and all the residents here today that came out in support. First wanted to thank um all the residents and everyone that was included in this project. You know, um it's amazing what happens when you really listen and and you have a a staff, council, commission, and residents that really get involved in city manager as well. And I'm really excited to present this project has been kind of shaped by everyone here uh including our team. Yeah. So we spent like I said we spent the last year listening. We met with planning staff, local leader leaders, residents. We've reviewed every public comment. We hosted a u outreach events and made design changes based on what we heard and the feedback that we got. Constantly trying to improve this and uh make it the best for all parties. During this pro uh pro process, we've made extensive changes uh based on this feedback. As she just talked about, uh we heard that the water access was something very important to the city. So, we made sure we put that into our design. You guys wanted park space and conserve the trees. We made sure to reallocate the roadways, change things around, and put a public park in there for you and preserve the trees. We met residents on the other side of the water concerned about their viewshed and what that would look like. We flew drones. We went out to pictures, made sure the sight lines were going and protected those vistas as much as possible. On traffic, we worked with VOTE and our traffic engineers and on a $2 million safety and connectivity plan focused on better flow and safety. Uh when other traffic concerns came up during the uh planning commission and

and other meetings, schoolboard meetings we attended as well, um we heard that uh the boat launch that we had initially planned was um a concern. they want did not want to have multiple vehicles with uh trucks and boats on Main Street. Uh so we worked with um uh Nansman River and we reached out to them about still maintaining a kayak launch so there's connectivity uh for the be able to use of the river and public access. Uh but we did take away eliminate that ability to uh put extra traffic concerns on the road. Schools of course were the top priority. We attended schoolboard meetings, heard the urgent need, the school administration building, uh, new schools and expansions. Our plan uh, profits that historic building as we talked about, and we really worked hard to try to make sure that was a win for everybody involved, freeing up nearly $18 million in budget for other top expansions and not tomorrow, not two years from now, right now. Um, which is very important. uh when we heard you guys have been part of those more than I have but it's trying to get a lot of those uh concerns in the schools addressed now right so this is helping free up that now this is a real impact for schools uh we also set growth limits after that as well uh hearing from the school board and superintendent and put those new profer in that you saw tonight with restricted cos to help them be able to plan accordingly to the growth every step of the way your input has shaped this plan. Uh this isn't my plan. This is everyone's plan uh that had any touch into it to help out. In my view, this is a gold standard for smart growth. Um collaborative, innovative, and designed to maximize value for all of Suffach and everybody involved. And we just and Ryan's been part of this community for a long time. We don't just say we're partners. You guys have proof in some of the things that we've done. Uh in Suffach, we've improved just down the road, Prime Mile within here, Apprentice Place. helped finish out that with beautiful brick homes and town

homes there. We're currently right now working on uh restoring what was kind of abandoned on Washington West Street that for nearly two decades and bringing it back to life and bringing affordable homes. We help people into homes and strive to create lasting neighborhoods and serve SUFFK families well. And we're excited that this one uh is is another opportunity. I won't go too much in detail about the byite. We we have has seen a lot of confusion on that, but I would like to address it a little bit. Uh yes, we did seek a buy right options. Um given this was any resoning is not assured and we were going into a large transaction. This is standard practice and and part of our due diligence process and no uh the buyer is not an MUD design. It uses multi um dwellings like she talked about it would be B2. The B rate design that works for our company in particular and our partners includes about 798 units and about 50% of those would have to be rentals and the rest for sale. That's 300 more than our current plan and additional 168,000 of commercial space. Um this design generates two and a half times more students and five times the traffic count for the proposed plan. Remove century trees, demolishes historic administration building, eliminates waterfront restaurant, public assets, profers and mainstream improvements. We we don't like that uh design. It's not ideal for us. As well, it is an achievable density as we talked about. Um it's only about 15 and a half units an acre compared to some other B2 projects you talked about that are in the 20 to 28 range. So, a denial of this um resoning is not a no to growth. It's a yes to putting us into a buy rights alternative and would proceed with uh without the additional benefits that we're trying to work with. Bottom line, we the buy ride is viable, but it's not ideal for anybody. It's not ideal for us. Um, it adds risk, tilts the site more heavily to rental, reduces product diversity, and results in a less desirable design and some uh added risk

on our part. And it's not the best use for the city in my humble opinion. And there's no real true community benefits, only problems. So, why does the approval matter here tonight? Um, like I said, a no vote forces not just this project, but other developers and businessmen to find uh businessmen and women find by plans that cause more traffic, more strain on schools, less public space, fewer benefits benefits, and no collaboration. When you vote yes, you're voting to immediately increase your capacity uh to solve the top priorities of Suffach schools, reduce taxpayer burden by $18 million, and improve safety and traffic on Main Street. I'm excited. Let's build a smart community focused neighborhood that reflects SuffK values of high standards. Let's set the bar and we're here. We're listening and we're ready to deliver. Uh thank you for your time and for your consideration.

Good evening again, Vice Mayor Ward, members of council. My name is Grady Palmer. business address uh 222 Central Park Avenue uh in city of Virginia Beach. And I I just want to take a minute or two to talk about why do we talk about the byite uses? Um and oftentimes that's heard as a threat and we're it's not meant as a threat. It's meant as a re reality check. Um, when you're dealing with zoned property, you have to consider what can be done by right because if if we if the plans that they're proposing tonight can't be approved, um, then the byright development option uh is something that they've got to consider uh to do. And you know, we we want to we we want you to make an educated decision about what what is best. Is this is this proposal better than the byite proposal? In our view, that's the decision tonight because it's VOTE has vacated the property. They're not going to operate it any longer. Uh and so it will be developed into something. And so um you know, the decision at rest with the with the city council is what is preferred. And one of the things that you don't get with by development is profers. We talked about that in the last uh last public hearing. This site uh is complete is mostly zone B2 with a little bit of MUD down there at the street. And I've seen uh some some comments online that the byite can't be developed unless it has access through the city the city property. That is simply not true. Uh the property can be developed uh under the B2 zoning with existing entrances without a traffic signal. That's one of the things that they're going to do on Main Street uh is if if approved, you know, that would be the main uh site entrance with a new traffic signal. Um that's not that does not happen under by right. Now, that's like I said, this is

not that's not meant as a threat. It's a reality check and we have to understand how zoning works and what can what can be developed under existing zoning. And that's really really important when you're dealing with a site like this. I mean, it's a critical location to downtown and some attention needs to be paid to what can be done by right versus what they're proposing. Uh, profers, school mitigation, uh, traffic mitigation. I mean, one of the things that that I look at this site, if it's if it's left to be developed under the B2 zoning, what that would do to Main Street with no proper mitigation uh, for traffic u congestion. Uh, so that's a major major consideration. doesn't mean you have to do it. I'm not suggesting that it's zone B2. You uh you got to reszone it to this. What I'm what I'm what I'm saying is for people in the audience uh listening is that's got to be a major consideration is what can be done under the existing zoning. Uh so with with that I I'm I was here to support these guys tonight. I think they've got a an excellent plan. I think the the profer for the school admin building is really creative. It will help solve budget issues for the schools. The domino effect of what will ripple through the capital improvement plan. Um, you know, they won't have to sign a new lease in 2028 at half a million, at least as it stands right now. I believe it's a half a million dollars a year. That money can be redirected. So, there's lots of benefits to to accepting that profer uh to relocate the school admin building uh to the site. We do ask for your approval. Thank you. You got 22 seconds. Anybody else want to speak? If anybody else want to speak, will the first people the first speaker

opposition please come forward and provide your name and address? Good. Uh, good evening, Vice Mayor, uh, city council member. I'm Dwight James. I reside in the Lakeside subdivision, uh, 211 Lynon Avenue, South of Virginia. Um, I want to start off and say I'm not against development at all. And in fact, uh, what the last individuals came up and said, it does sound like it makes a lot of sense. And I can agree on a lot of the stuff, but I want to talk about the buy right. Of course, they have by right to do stuff, but if that was the case, they would have went the by right direction instead of the direction that they're trying to go right now. Obviously, this direction is going to make them a lot of money, which is why they want to do it this way. But let's let's be frank here. The big issue right now that we have, um, and I'm talking on behalf as a parent and also a PTA member, is uh the schools are just overcrowded. Um and that really needs to be a part of this resoning process. The reasoning proposal before you guys is for 497 dwelling units. As part of the request, the applicant has presented a new voluntary profer that includes phase certificate of occupy spread over the years. The amendment alone shows that they already acknowledge that there's infrastructure capacity issues and that growth cannot happen all at once. If the applicant is willing to wait for the certificate of occupacy, then it's reason then it is reasonable for the city to require that the critical infrastructure be addressed first. We should just address our schools first and then after we done then they can come build this. What are they if they're going to wait for till 2031 they can wait for this. Um across schools are already under strain. Booger T. Washington Elementary School and Mac uh

elementary school have both fallen below the 80 point threshold which they just put out and were designated off track which means they're not even on track. There's two elementary schools not even on track to even to even be on the education level. They're behind. So, and now we're trying to build more houses to impact the schools. Um children are been are being taught in trailers. I went to Elephants Fork last week and it as you guys know you guys were cold. when you guys were all bundled up inside the building and the kids had to walk from the trailer into the school just to use the bathroom in the freezing cold. Every student has to do that. All the fifth grade class at Elephant Fort has to do that. Hill Point faces the same thing. These are not future concerns. These are present day concerns that we facing right now and it's affecting our children and our educators. The applicant's willing to phase certificates of occupancy demonstrates that waiting is already in the proposal. They're already willing to wait. If waiting is acceptable for housing occupy, then waiting for a meaningful school improvement should also be acceptable. Growth should not outpace the ability of our schools to serve students safely and effectively. This is not opposition to development. I'm not opposed to development. It is a call for responsible balanced growth. Development should move at the same pace as our infrastructure. Our infrastructure is behind. I don't know how many times we have to say that it's behind. As a PTA member, a parent, and a community advocate, I believe it's reasonable to ensure that Hillpoint is addressed before approving occupy at this scale. Our children should not be expected to absorb the impact of growth while waiting years for relief. If we're willing to wait to occupy these homes, we should also be willing to wait until our schools are ready. Thank you. Good evening, Jenny Wilman, 4305 Ansley Court South. I'd really like to say that I'm pleased to be in front of you

tonight, but frankly, I'm disappointed that for the benefit of the developer, we've pulled an earmarked and well-worn page out of the How to Disenfranchise Your Community Playbook and kicked this vote to the week before Christmas. But here we are. If you've read the over 130 pages of public comments, you'll see that overwhelmingly the citizens of Suffach do not support this project. And funny enough, that public boat ramp and the waterfront, that's the one thing that maybe garnered slight interest from a small margin of constituents. I don't see that anywhere profered in the version before you. It's almost like it's something different than what went through the planning commission. Our schools are crumbling. They're overcrowded and they are rife with safety concerns. Traffic is inconvenient and cumbersome at best, but it's actually dangerous and sometimes deadly at worst. And whether that's because of accidents or delayed emergency response times, it's something you need to consider. And speaking of emergency response times, the strain on infrastructure and public services is immense. And that's without the already approved 7,000 homes that are in the pipeline to be built. I find it ironic that a council who for so many years has showed such little regard for our deep agricultural roots in this community think that you can make these decisions in a silo. Your decisions and your votes have consequences and the effects, both positive and negative, will be known and felt for generations to come. Now, I am pleased to see that so many of my fellow citizens are speaking up and

doing what frankly council historically has not, which is advocate for the best interest of our community. I myself spoke at the school board and was incredibly pleased to see them unanimously vote to withhold support for this project. And that's with the dangling carrot of the long overdue and sorely needed school administration building and with what I believe and I'm going to use the word threat of development with no profers under the current zoning. The promised gains of this deal no way come close to offsetting the guaranteed losses that we will feel. This city seems to have a knack for creating a problem and coming back later to try to sell us a bad solution. You know, it was actually that school board meeting that the mayor suggested it might be hard for me to wrap my head around the zoning, but I would really like to assure you all that it's not hard for me or for many others to see clearly what is going on here. In fact, I would wager there are people that wish it was a little bit harder to understand. Transparency has never seemed to be the goal for city council in these dealings. The city is pushing hard for approval with this resoning because without the resoning and without the gifted land, the deal isn't viable. Now, I will admit something that is hard for me to wrap my head around is how someone with a conflict of interest has continued to officially speak about this project. That was a busy evening at the school board for me because it was that same evening that I was approached by someone who actually used to share the das with

you. Now like the mayor, I'm sure that walking away from that conversation, that gentleman was a little ruffled and truly felt like we didn't see eye to eye on anything with the riverbin project. But you know, he would be wrong. He explained to me that now he works as a consultant to get problems through city council. Well, you know what? I agree. This sure is a problem. Now, unlike the lovely woman who stood in front of you a few weeks ago and made it abundantly clear she never has, never will in any iteration want to be a SUFFK resident. I actually do. I grew up in Portsmouth, not Suffk, but I had the privilege of coming to school out here and I saw what this city had to offer. And while it wasn't an option for me growing up, when my husband and I had children, my husband being a Suffach native, we made sure it wasn't just an option for our children, but it was the choice for our children to raise our family here. But you know what? Sadly, after over a decade, I don't see Suffach the same way. Our city has prioritized indiscriminate development over smart, balanced and sustainable growth. The wants of outof area developers over the needs of our own citizens. We currently have the resources and the finances to make needed meaningful change in our city. What your vote of no tonight will show us is that we also have the leadership. Let's fix what's broken before we add more weight. To borrow a phrase from my friends in Richmond who can often be heard saying, "Don't California my Virginia.

Please don't Portmith my suffic." It is actually my Christmas wish that before you vote to approve this or any similar project, you will do as Councilman Johnson suggested, pump the brakes. You all live in Suffk. We should all be real used to doing that at this point. Thank you for your time.

Christopher Dove, A52, Colonel Lee Drive, Suffach, Virginia. Yeah. what she said. Uh the only issues that I I want to bring up are that uh the plan that they have is going to lose us commercial properties. If they do it by right, we won't lose those commercial properties. They'll be underneath the residential housing. So this is a zone for commercial and the let me say right now says that the one section sorry about that says that commercial properties or the commerce section is for retail restaurants and personal services is the primary goal of that zoning. So to initiate or to imply that multifamily dwellings is a viable option uh sort of dis makes it the secondary use which is by profering by by right is the primary use of the zoning is incorrect. It is the commercial is the last commercial area that we have in downtown Suffach. No other commercial area is developable. It's already been developed. We used to have something over by where and they now have warehouses that was commercial, but you guys got rid of that. So now we have transportation infrastructure issues out all over the place which are an issue that you haven't dealt with which would mean that you could go ahead and prove this anyway because you can't deny a zoning because of uh infrastructure. However, this is not just that you have the issue is that it's not compatible with the comprehensive plan. The comprehensive plan says retail, restaurants, and personal services. This is not that.

What I'd like to suggest is that you take this project and you go ahead and follow the um concurrent impacts regulations where you don't have any schools replacing Hillpoint and you don't have a school replacing Kings Fork and until you do they should go ahead and put those develency off until they have that whether the school board has to go ahead and restructure how they do their schools. Make a middle school into a high school or a elementary school or a mixed group. That's something between you and them. It can be done and it can be done in a few years instead of having to build a new school. But follow the UDO. Make sure that you don't make a more of a problem by just going ahead and approving more residential. The threat and it is a threat of byite is not that much of a threat because they have other restrictions that they've got to work. They talked about how they have to have a proper balance between residential and commercial. And they got to have those commercial in there before they can go ahead and have a residential. And you can now talk to Mr. Wines and he'll tell you that you've got to have you can't just say, "Well, we're going to put res businesses in there later." You can't. You got to have the right ratios. So that will prevent them from throwing in a whole bunch of houses. Think about that before you go ahead and approve this. I suggest you go ahead and follow your own zoning ordinance and do what you're supposed to do in the first place. Thank you.

Mr. Vice Mayor, councilors, city staff, my name is Jeff Payne. I reside at 120 Northgate Lane. Been a resident here for 40 years despite my accent. I sent you a detailed objection to this proposal which I hope you all had the time to read. I've listened to the staff report. I've listened to the developers narrative. I've listened to the planning commission. Nowhere is any mention made of the fact that the light at Main Street and Constance Road is already operating at a service level of F in some directions. F meaning fail by VOTE standards already today. Why is that not mentioned anywhere in any report? The the numbers are hidden right there in their own table deep in the report. You have to take the study to analyze every little box and you find those Fs. Fail today. Traffic all over Suffukk has increased. We all have longer journey times. For me, it's typically 50% longer to get where I need to go. Main Street is no exception. Main Street fails to meet VOTE standards on practically every level. The lanes are too narrow for safety. The traffic lights are already too close together and this proposal plans to add another one in that area. The turning radiuses at those traffic lights are inadequate for large vehicles to do a U-turn.

All these things create danger and potential for accidents. We all know that when there's a problem on the bypass that Main Street becomes gridlocked. What happens then to our emergency service access either to accidents on the road or the businesses or the the housing that are off main street? There are no escape routes from Elephants Fork to Constant Road when we have gridlock. It is time that the traffic analysis in the uh proposed development was challenged. You represent the last chance to get the facts out in the open. Do not fail us. The developer says, "Oh, they're going to improve the traffic situation on Main Street by adding more vehicles." They will probably, if you press them, say, "Oh, don't worry. Improved signalization will make the problem go away." That's what was said when we developed overseas place and I don't see any improvement from increased signalization. You also have the impact of what's happening with the bypass. You can hardly get off the bypass these days because the traffic's so heavy. And when we start building those warehouses and have to put in the new interchange, what's that going to do to traffic on Main Street for the next five years? council, you must deny this project until answers are given to the traffic situation. Not just at Constants and Maine, but everywhere in the immediate area.

And not just sweet little words of don't worry, the problem will go away. Let us see a computer model of the traffic flow as things increase. It's failing today. You've already approved lots of other projects which will add traffic to Main Street and now you're going to potentially add another 500 homes. There's no way you can stop Main Street from failing. You have no opportunities to really increase Main Street in any way. So think twice before voting for a failed Main Street. Challenge the developer. Do not accept these glib answers. vote for what the citizens want and not what the developer wants. And that's my contribution. I wait for your challenging questions. Here I come again. Good evening. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Happy celebration of lights to everyone because this will be the last time you hear my voice and I do wish you to take on the spirit of the season and receive that. I stand at the foot of the cross convicted. I stand at the foot of the cross convicted. Main Street was developed how it is over centuries and more importantly directly after World War II. It is historic. It cannot be blown out like US 58 Hamburger Alley right up to church steps. How it was built, where it was built is literally a thin line.

Could you say your name and Yes, sir. Kelly Hingler. Yes. Yes. Vice Mayor 9345 Eclipse Drive, Southern Virginia. Thank you, sir.

I'll take my own point of order on that one. Sorry. So, there is something in Virginia called the New Dominion era. This was the boom that happened after World War II. And every hustle was put on to put everything everywhere so that we could grow. And one of those hustles was to put and I challenged the why the state as an applicant is not up here speaking because I want to tell you I'm very confused about this packet that is before you because it literally said states the applicant is the Commonwealth of Virginia and the city of Suffuk. Where are you Virginia? I'll tell you your daughter is standing right here convicted at the base of the cross because we have a very confusing situation of application going on here. Vot built that building and it is part of our history of Virginia. It should be a landmark. If you do not know this, it existed before what we have today known as a Virginia Department of Transportation is a very distinctive architectural style. We would have that as I challenged you again standing convicted at the base of the cross to say to you each and every one of you council members where is your representative on a historic commission that represents your burrow in this city and I have yet to get an answer and I've been asking since 2018 even through congressional inquiry we would have known this we would have known that that main street piece that stem that falls right between two waterways that has been developed on both sides as a passage passageway of Main Street after World War II seated that administration building to the front and that VOTE did a gorgeous job or Department of Transportation, the Commonwealth of Virginia did. And what you see with the apartments next door is that the apartments and the density is to the front to the front edge of the road and a little tail on that parcel. But what you see with this is I'm attempting to park and here's the whole

point of my matter, okay? trying to park all of this to the back. Well, what's up front there with that administrative building, which is in fact a Virginia landmark. I declare it. I claim it, okay, in its architecture, it style, and what we can use it for eventually. But they are parked there as archaeologic resources that are known to the state because before we had the National Historic Preservation Act, we had something called the Antiquities Act. They knew that riddled throughout that property is not just any archaeological site. They have been highly studied. That is why you have those large trees. They will not get ripped out because I am at the foot of the cross. They will not get ripped out. that property. And by the way, and I want to inform you since your city did not inform you, council, is a very rare and distinct parcel. The Commonwealth of Virginia, who is not here as an applicant before you, but her your her the Virginia daughter is staying in here, they passed a statute. That state statute was under the Chesapeake Bay chapter of all of our Virginia code, which means our law. And our city decided to adopt that statute. and it decided to name this property an intensely developed area. An intensely developed area ADA, you can type it into a browser. Virginia will bring you to the Virginia law. You can type it into Suffuk Uni code which is the law and you will see this property. What does intensely develop area property mean? It has a very specific qualifier. Do you see on the picture please? There is wetlands on this parcel. I have wetlands on my parcel in my house too. There's river which is conservation an impaired waterway of the United States and Virginia navigable. It is our mother

river. What you have on other sides which you don't see on this is residential low medium. What they're trying to do is jump this into residential urban 18 with over 400 plus houses. No ma'am. No sir. Intensely developed areas as it's been stated is a brownfield is in fact instead because this is a critical resource area and as after World War II we built everything down that corridor. We had the OBC hospital. Thank you. Rest in peace sir. We had transportation for the whole region on our main street. A feather in our cap. And they did not intensively use it but it is over 50% of the total parcel by law as the statute is intensely developed area. Okay. Over 50% has been developed. Therefore it is eligible for redevelopment under Chesapeake Bay under this ordinance. My Virginia why are you not at the podium? Because it is the law. It cannot be superseded. Because it is the law. It takes dominance here. Because the city of Suffach adopted that parcel as an intensely developed area of the Chesapeake Bay. I have an added exception for you. I need my champions to come forward please because that is a critical resource area. That is a critical resource area. We have a rare property and so this is why I know you don't know this in Suffach that is labeled for IDA. This property can only be redeveloped. Keep talking about buy please. It makes me laugh because you can only do low density. Our city adopted that. Our city adopted this parcel as IDA. It is not in your packet which I will wrap up and leave you with with six minutes on here in case anybody else

wants to come up. But what the staff has not provided you in your packet, which every one of our applications is a brilliant learning experience for all of us, is that they went really into detail about what is corridor overlay district zoning, what is uh mix this, mix that. They put a whole descriptive paragraph for you. Did they say to our good and esteemed council members that this is a rare gem of a property that's available for redevelopment that is owned by our state which means this daughter of Virginia owns it as all these other children back here own it. Okay. And they have not come forward to speak to this application listed as the applicant. I have questions. Did our good council member get provided in the rare instance of having an IDA property come forward the state statute on what an IDA is? What the parameters are for it to be declared an IDA? What can and cannot be built on it? No. That is called a sin of emission. And that is why I'm standing at the base of the cross because I bear bear witness to forgiveness of everybody in politics. No. In bureaucracy, no. in the wheels of our government that is called a sin of omission. It is a moral issue where our city staff have been grinding this project without formally informing our council members and our planning commission that this is an IDA property. I say less and I wish you all blessing and I true true say to you with all love, we got to do better. Good evening, U Will Webb, 810 Dumbville Avenue. Uh, good evening, Vice Mayor and members of council. I'm here to voice my strong opposition to the proposed

reszoning of the VOTE parcel and to highlight several issues that make this project unsuitable for our community. I'll try and jump ahead a couple of things that have already been hit on, but I think we should also remember back to a few weeks back at council's work session with the school board. This project and the building profer will not free up badly needed funds over the next few years. In reality, approval of this project would cost the city at least an additional $15 million for an expansion on Hillpoint as Dr. Gordon outlined. Uh now, just a couple few quick stats because we already touched on traffic. Uh the developers traffic impact analysis says that 5,299 additional daily vehicle trips will be associated with this project and that doesn't even include the B2 uh that is not being uh touched with this resoning. Those 5,000 plus additional trips would mean more daily traffic on Main Street than many of the other regional thorough affairs in the area such as the James River Bridge, Midtown Tunnel, Greenbryer Parkway, Jake Clyde Morris, Hampton Boulevard and many more. Is that what we want our main street to look like? Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization's recent congestion management plan released in July lists the intersection at Constants and Maine as the 11th worst in all of Hampton Roads and the only quote failing intersection on this side of the Interstate 64 loop. The more recent data from HRTPO already has the intersection at being 37% more congested than what the developers TIA reports and that's just in the past three years. We know congestion is a problem and this is just inviting more. By 2035 if this project was built out that intersection would ranked as tied for first as the worst intersection in all of Hampton Roads. Again, is that what we want for our main street? As we've heard tonight, traffic is a real concern. If sitting in traffic isn't bad enough, we also need to think about the impact this congestion would have on our local businesses. As vice

chairman of the SU SuffK Economic Development Authority, I understand the importance of promoting industry and commerce in our city. But promoting growth should not come at the expense of residents quality of life. According to a study by MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, 72.8% 8% of respondent respondents would shift to online shopping if faced with a five-minute delay due to traffic congestion. For every extra minute spent sitting in traffic, downtown businesses lose customers. Increased congestion reduces retail sales and discourages repeat visits. More cars stuck on Main Street means fewer customers walking through our downtown businesses. Again, is this what we want from Main Street? Our mayor is fond of saying that rooftops attract businesses, but that is only true if people can efficiently get to those businesses. Multiple peer-reviewed studies show that increased traffic delays and reduced access discourages planned shopping trips and push shoppers to faster, more convenient alternatives, often either online or outside of the downtown area. U and finally the housing product proposed for this development isn't meeting a critical need in SuffK housing market. We already have a similar products nearby like Hallstead Reserve just a mile down the road and they haven't been in high demand. So why the rush? We already know the underlying school and infrastructure issues that we have. Why push forward with this project when there's such strong public opposition? So what's the answer? What's the alternative? Let me close with a suggestion. Let's put publicly owned land to public use. The city has already done its part to help VOTE. Between the city and the EDA, Suffach donated over $5 million and land and storm water improvements for VOTE to move their facilities to Northgate. Now is the time to use this parcel for the benefit of the public, not for more condos and more congestion. The city should acquire this property and put it to use for the

public good. Whether that means expanding green space, providing more river access, or building an athletic facility and event venue for public use, let's plan for the future in a way that benefits everyone, not just the developers. Tonight, I urge you to listen to your constituents. 98 public comments, that's what I counted on the overall format. That's probably a record for a reasonzoning. So, please listen to your constituents and vote no on this resoning application. Thank you for your time. That's the time for opposition. Will the first speaker for rebellion please come forward? Rebuttal. Please come forward and provide your name and address.

Karen McFerson with VHB. I'm the traffic engineer for the developer. I reside at 4500 North Main Street, Virginia Beach, Virginia. I did want to um address some of the comments that were made relative to the um proposed development versus the byight development. They are accurate. This is projected to generate over 5,000 vehicles per day. If this was development by rightight, we would have over 15,000 vehicles per day. That's the byite development. Another um based on that type of development, you are creating additional commercial in this area. With the residential, you're rec you're creating users that will use the already available commercial, reducing the amount of vehicle miles traveled to these uses. Again, reducing the vehicle miles traveled. Regarding the congestion at Maine and Constants, yes, it is a critical intersection and the character of that is it's a main street. It's a decision point where during peak hours you have people competing to turn left, go through from all directions. That's one hour out of the day and we try to balance that. So not everybody gets uh level of service C. there are other minor movements that we have to balance the overall delay. So during that that's one hour out of the day for the entire corridor. One of the things that we looked at was balancing vehicles, pedestrians and safety. So we've all seen the increase of pedestrian postcoid. There's an increase of pedestrian actuation. We're stopping vehicles. We're trying to slow you down and enjoy Main Street for what it is. The character of the corridor is different. You have multimodal smaller radiuses and again the overall corridor

is to meet the multimodal nature of the street as well as the safety in order to reduce crashes. So those are my comments. I stand by for questions. Again for the record, Grady Palmer, uh 222 Central Park Avenue, uh City of Virginia Beach. And I just want to make make it make you I know you don't think this of your staff, but I just want to make it clear. Your staff didn't miss anything. I'm going to tell you what an industrial what an intensely developed area is. It is a designation uh the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act that actually exempts property from the normal regulations in the Ches Bay Preservation Act. I mean, this site is basically completely impervious. Um, and so when you have sites like that, you adopt an intensely developed area map and it identifies sites that don't have ecological value for purposes of the Chesapeake Bay and they're identified for development. So that's all that means. It doesn't have anything to do with the use of the property, uh, how many units we can build, u whether it's commercial or residential. It is it is a simply an exception from normal standards in the Chesapeake Bay Act because it's been intensely developed for many many years and the and the act the bay act actually encourages development on that parcel. So that's all an IDA site is your staff didn't miss anything. Uh it's a Chesapeake Bay regulation. It's not a zoning regulation. So it doesn't control um what can be done on the site. In fact it it's encouraged to be redeveloped uh is what that means. Um, so I just wanted to make that clear. I we we know traffic is an issue. Um, and we have this proposal. Again, I'm I'm going to be repetitive and I'm sorry. Um, this proposal will have substantial traffic

mitigation profers uh and solutions uh versus whatever else gets built on the site. Something's going to get built on the site. It's it's either going to be uh what our buy plan is, it's going to be a bunch of commercial. None of that will have the traffic solutions uh uh and mitigation uh efforts that this proposal includes. Um you know so that's a big difference between you know now maybe maybe you can get this site as a park. Yeah I I don't you know this VOTE has put the market the property up for bids. They they want to sell it. They're moving. Um I mean maybe you can work out a site but you know that seems like an unlikely solution. uh and and one that's going to cost you a lot of money uh to acquire and to perpetually maintain. Parks are expensive items in your budget. So, um you know, maybe that's maybe that's a possibility. I don't think it's a probability. Um so, I think I think the the decision is is this proposal better than whatever comes by, right? Um, and I I I hate to make things simple, but I think that is the decision tonight that you you've got to evaluate. Does our does this proposal with all the profers and mitigation impacts uh for the schools uh for for traffic on Main Street, is that better than whatever comes along by right whether it's all commercial uh or a mixeduse that can be done as well by right? I think that's the that's the dilemma before you today. We have we have tried to come up with the best solution that we we can. We know we know all the issues that are out there. That's why we're trying to profer a school admin building. We know schools need attention. We believe that that will have a substantial domino effect uh that will free up money that can be used for classroom uh space. And so we know that's a that that is a high priority

for the schools to find a new admin building. Uh I there is this is a great location for an admin building. uh in terms of accessibility from all parts of Suffach. So, uh we we've worked hard to come up with a plan uh that is better than uh than what will be what can be done by right here. Um again, not a not it's not a threat. You just have to deal with the realities that are before you and the site is zoned commercial. Now, one other thing I just want to say, the jobs to housing doesn't apply to B2. There is no jobs to housing. there's just B2 whether it's Bridgeport uh whether it's Meridian I mean that's just going to can go in there is no jobs to housing that is a mixeduse development mud requirement so if you remember uh we did the Harbortown north and in and Harbortown and Harbor View uh earlier this year that was a mud that had a jobs to housing ratio where you you can't build residential until there's a certain amount of jobs that are created that does not apply to B2 So with that, we do ask for your approval tonight. We are all here to answer any questions that you have. Thank you.

Adam Edbower again, 556 Rivergate Road, Chesapeake, Virginia. Um just wanted to say a couple things just, you know, with everyone uh on the remarks. Um I'm not going to take too much time. Um but uh you know I think it's really important that uh most of the people that came up here that had a lot of opinions and concerns about it. Um we're actually not that much of disagreements. Uh that's why we're up here really trying to come up with a plan that can help solve some of these problems. And we I can't say that we have the perfect plan, but I would challenge you of what's a higher and best use for this that can uh put $15 million back into you guys' budgets to help fix other problems in schools. It's a lot of money. 1850 18 million or more. Um, you know, at put a public sparks uh that public park space in there, put access to the water. Um, try to do some mitigation improvements on Main Street, try to help some of these problems that everyone's concerned about. We we've tried to listen. We tried to adapt it and create this. Um, and again, I I don't want to put the the buy right as a threat. It it's I don't want to do it. It doesn't. And to a couple people said, they would do it if it's makes sense to a point. Yes. But there's always balances. There's a lot of nuances to risk, type of product, the diversity, what the market is, all these different balances, and the fact that I'm Ryan Holmes and we don't build commercial. So, that's not a highest and best use for us, right? But, um, we have options and we have ability to do that. But, that's not what we want. I don't think that's what anyone else wants either. Um, we've been open communication and uh talking to everyone to try to constantly improve it. We're not going to be the best for everybody, but we're really trying to do something that's a a multiplier uh to give as much good as we can with the project that we're doing um and try to help you guys solve some problems as well. And um with that, I'll I thank you again, guys.

One minute left. Anybody want it? Not you. Just for rebuttal. Hearing no additional speakers. This public hearing is now over. Okay. Ordinance has been presented to council consideration. The motion is in order. What is the pleasure of city council?

You want I might as well get this up and get it over because Melissa, everybody knows how I feel and I I Melissa started to cry a little bit and I might do the same thing. But here's the problem and it's not the developer. You guys have done when I look down the list of the things you want to do with the waterfront and to develop the park and the historical building, but this is not the problem for me. The problem for me is something Kelly Hingler just said and it just hit me. This is a rare gem and it's our rare gem and it's VOTE's rare gem and VOTE's wrong to let this piece of property go like this. So my vote honestly is because I'm pissed and I have been for a while. We as a council did not make these decisions. Most of us weren't even consulted about it. And that's why I'm upset and that's why you all need to talk to your council members about how we do business because this site is too valuable to the history of the city of Suffach to allow us to put all these houses on it. I'm sorry. I'm support your houses and we got plenty more coming. So don't worry, every time I talk to somebody, we've got another subdivision coming and there's places they should be. But not down core downtown Suffach. This site should be a place for people to go enjoy the shops, enjoy the waterfront, enjoy the restaurants that we're going to get if we keep developing like we are and for the people of this city to have big trees in their sight and I have things that mean something to us. That's my problem with this. You guys have done a fantastic job with what you put forward. I really am impressed and I could support it except for the fact that it's not what I think that site should be about. I'm I'm sorry and I you know I'm the I'm I'm very seldom the one in the right up here it seems like anymore but

this one has really thrown me for a loop and I Melissa knows how I feel. I support her. She's been a friend of mine for a long long time and she's a good developer. This is she does a great job and I um it really struggled to put something down that she's a part of but I truly believe this is wrong. And here's the reasons really. Let's let's just start at the top. Number one, I don't believe in giving up school proper for anything. Whether it's for a building that we're going to put the school board office in, which we should, but we should be the one dictating it, not you guys, or anything like that. But but our schools need these school properties to eventually build these buildings. Now, it's not going to build them, but it's going to at least help us or put us in a direction where we need to. I have a problem with that. I have a problem with the fact that our schools are in trouble. And the school that this these developments is going to support truly is at its peak. It can't take any more kids. So, we can put it off 20 years, but maybe that's what we should do anyway. Um, everything is about timing. This timing is wrong. From my perspective, I just don't agree with it. Um, I got to get myself organized again. You say it's not a wetlands area. It's a wetlands area. In my book, it's a wetlands area and it's important area to a city. And Lord knows what any of us, you guys might not want it either going to find once we start digging on that site and find out what's been left there. But VOTE because there's stuff there, but I think it's stuff that we need to be the ones to make the decision on. Um the park part, of course, you know, I support the park. What a wonderful idea. Those trees are anybody that cuts those trees down should be very ashamed of themselves. They're amazing to all of us. Um, we have an EDA and my my point from the beginning was why doesn't EDA get this land and we take it and create something really fantastic for our city. And you see, I'm not criticizing you developers. I'm you know, I've had a reputation for not liking development. I like development. I just don't want it on farmland and I don't want it downtown

at the BOT site. That that's my problem. One more minute, Lou, and I'm gonna quit so you somebody else can go on. Um, because they told me I could only speak once and then I'm going shut up. Um, I I still think it's salvageable. I think the property is salvageable. I think if you guys looked at it again and came up with a better plan, I I could get on board with it if was the right plan. But I'm not faulting you. I can't I can't vote in favor of it because I don't agree with it. And I do think the timing is way off for us. I think there's things we need to put in front of this. There's things we need to do for our downtown. And we need housing. We need housing for people that can't afford housing. That's not what's going to happen on this site. You know that as well as I do. That but that my point being we as a council have got to start really talking about it and making it the front of what we do. And it needs to be downtown, but we've got some areas of our city that need to be renovated, need to be torn down and built back and do it in such a way that people can afford it. My point being, this isn't it from my perspective. I'm sorry. And with that, I promised you I'd be nice. I'm gonna be nice, but I I just can't support it. I I think it's wrong. I think that if we don't start listening to the people of our city a little bit more than we do, none of us are going to be up here because and don't get me wrong, you're not always right. Come on. You you you're sentimental. We we love what we love and we love what we want. But I'm sorry that we still need to observe that and take it to heart that we all live here together. So, that's my problem. And I I know I'm not a good speaker, but um that's why I'm going to have to vote no. Councilwoman Wright.

So, I I actually have a lot to say. Um, but I have a couple of questions first. But before I get into my questions, I do want to make an acknowledgement. I do appreciate the effort that went into listening to the citizens on this project. I do think that you all have put in a lot of profers to to meet some of the needs um for this to move forward. One question I have before I I I go into my long tie rate because I'm going to be here for a minute is in one of your profers you offer to slow down the occupancy but it's not to include if I'm reading this corrected correctly the age restricted active adult units. Is there any particular reason why the uh why the active the the 55 plus units or the age restricted units are not a part of that rolling out of you? Someone can make their way up here because I I promise you I'm going to need answers please. Thank you. Um why was the age restricted not a part of that?

Uh yes ma'am. because they don't generate school age children. Okay. So the reason why I'm asking that question is you all are in the business of making money. It is a business. Correct.

Correct. I am in the business of advocating for my constituents and ensuring that we make the right decisions for the city. While these profers are good, I personally think the roll out of the age restricted starting in 2028 would make more sense. And this is just my humble opinion because that gives us more time while you guys feel a requirement that we do have. We do need an administrative building, but that doesn't take away from the fact that our schools are strained and our roads are are messed up. So if you are going to offer a roll out of properties to not begin to 28 in a certain amount at that time, in my humble opinion, it would make more sense to roll out the age restricted ones to buy the city more time to mitigate some of our issues with schools. So that's one thing that I think needs to be considered. Another thing that I I think is very important is that I sat here and I'll tell you I came in here mindset on voting yes on this project but to hear multiple times and I know that you say that it's not a threat but the whole buy right and we use the you know let's do a reality check and all of those things by right is that it that that is a reality ity of what could happen. But I think that we should take a different approach in how we approach these type of situations. SuffK is the largest city landwise. There was a lot of land to be developed. So in this type of business, I think it's important that we do relationship building. So while you can do by right, you're going to have to come to the city

for something else at some other point. And so if we look at reality checks, I think we should probably kind of reestablish how we present things to council because while you all have leverage, we do too as well. So I think that it's important that as we negotiate, we keep in mind and keep things in perspective as to what your business is and what our business is. So the dilemma I have right now is not a dilemma of just picking the better of the two evils because either way it puts my citizens at a disadvantage. It puts a taxing on our schools and we have an infrastructure problem. I have a lot to say infrastructure. Nobody even talked about the Kimberly Bridge. There is a lot to be desired with our infrastructure. And if we wanted to pull this forward and press this forward and if city council wants to do what is right and do business with people and with the different organizations that do want to come here because we welcome that. We do want you to come here. I think that we have a responsibility as a council to do balance growth. They have done the developer. I'm not even blaming the developer. the developer has done and offered a lot. And I'll tell you, if I have to vote on this right now after hearing everything that I've heard today, my answer is going to be no. So, what I'm going to say right now is I'm going to ask my council, my fellow partners on council to figure out a way if you're go if we're going to say yes to development, yes to 500 homes, and yes, we are offered a building that is an operational need. We also sat in a meeting, a joint meeting with city counsel, with school board where we said where we didn't have money for this and

we didn't have money for that. If we are going to because we have to stop doing this. We have to stop approving stuff and then coming back finding solutions. We have an issue with infrastructure on Main Street. We've taken the Kimberly Bridge out of the CIP. We're adding we're proposing to add another 500 houses. Any time that it rains really hard, Main Street is shut down because it floods. So, we've removed it from the CIP because it costs too much. We've repprioritized things with schools because it costs too much. And to be quite honest, and I'm not placing fault on anyone because when I volunteered to assume this watch, and I assume it fully, so I'm not going to keep blaming uh previous decisions, but the truth of the matter is we could have done different in how we rolled out our capital improvements. We didn't have to do all of the traffic all at one time. We could have did a balanced approach of infrastructure for um for roads and schools that would have helped to stop some of the issues we have with traffic. We have to begin to be more strategic and be smarter about how we do things. So, I'm not blaming the developer. The only thing I'll put on the developer and I what I will encourage you and any other developer that comes before this council is reconsider how you present the buy right because at the end of the day we have the vote and this is a partnership and we welcome the partnership but I don't want to feel like my hands are tied. But what I will say to this council and what I'm going to motion for because if I vote today is no. What I will challenge this council to do if we want to encourage development because we do need rooftops, we have to find solutions to tackle our schools and we have to find solutions to tackle our

infrastructure. We can't approve this and be like, okay, this is this one, then what's the next one? And then what is the next one? And by the time we get the infrastructure squared away, we're behind because we have all of these houses approved in a pipeline. I challenge this council as we close out this year. I challenge this council to do better. Let's change course. Let's reset. When you have a budget in your household and you are saving for something or you're preparing for something, you're going to look at your wife crazy if Amazon packages keep coming to the door. If you're saving, it makes zero sense to continue spending. If we want to make a correction, it doesn't make any sense to create more levels of service, to create more traffic and infrastructure problems, to overcrowd our schools even more, and then come and then push the project down the line. So, I am going to I am motioning a deferral for this council to come up with a plan to come up with a plan on how we are going to tackle our schools. How we are going to tackle we can't say yes to this and not come up with some type of compromise in our CIP. We're approaching our CIP. If this is important for us to to to do business with developers, I I motion that we defer this until we come up with a strategic plan that makes sense. But we just can't keep doing this. We're we're coming we're going to be coming up from the rear forever and ever and ever. And I'm quite frankly over it. So I'm asking that we defer this because again, I don't know what the votes look like, but if I vote today, it's a no. So, I motion for a deferral until council could come up with a plan to to do something, but this is not it. Um,

council member, you you actually do need to have a date. You cannot indefinitely postpone a few a date. You say I said city council is not permitted to indefinitely postpone a reasonzoning decision. You need to vote yes or no at some point.

Okay. So my proposal is that we postpone this until February. That gives us an opportunity as we're working our CIP to figure out how we can make some improvements to our schools because yes, we get a building. I appreciate that. That is a great operational investment for us. However, what are we strategically doing with the savings from that? What is the plan? What does that look like? How are we taking that money and putting it back in our to our CIP to reap the benefits of that? And I just I would just like to see that before we press forward because what's important to me, we're public servants and public trust is more important. And so we can make these decisions all day long and even sometimes we may make the wrong decisions, but I need to know that people trust that we've done our due diligence. and I just feel like there's no end here. And so I think that we probably need to rethink this project before moving forward. So my motion is to defer this until February. Um what is our first meeting in February? When do we vote on our CIP?

Okay. So our second meeting in February, that would be the 19th. 19th. 18th. Sorry. 18.

Can I speak? Can I speak? Speak. Well, this will be just speak to Ebony for a minute. Ebony, I I support you 100%. Here's my only concern. I don't think by February we will be able to fix the schools. I mean, but and the other thing is, is that fair to this developer that has put this forward? I don't I'm just playing devil's advocate here. I don't know. I you know and I'll be quiet now. I won't speak. Go ahead. Councilman Bennett, he's calling.

Okay. My uh question or concern is the same as what Councilman Wright said. If we're gonna do this, I think we need to have what we are looking for as far as the age restriction when that would be cos in affect the school system. And I think the way it's laid out for different years, but it it wasn't in the age restriction in that. So I think that's one of the concerns that she was asking that you might still would have capacity in the schools wherein that uh we're not prepared for. So that's reason one of the reason that uh I understood that she's asking and I agree with that. I think we need to have that where we'll know exactly what effect it's going to have on the schools if this were to pass. But I will second her motion for the deferral for to February.

Councley.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Um, and I I was happy to second as well. Um, I just want to make a couple of comments. Um, first of all, I want to say I don't hate this project. I honestly don't hate this project. There are some really good things about it. Um, I think the preservation of the existing building and its use as a school administration office is a very creative idea and a very um several people have made the point that it it helps our CIP situation with our schools. It frees up some other money. So, I love that. I love keeping the trees. I love the park. I love the river access. Um, we've had a Melissa and I have had a conversation about the fact that this is infill development. We would be building um in a place that's already developed, not taking in virgin land outside of the growth areas. I like that part of it. Um, I like the potential that we have to make it walkable, um, which hopefully reduces some of the traffic issues. So, so these are the things that I love about it. However, the process that we've gone through from the initial introduction of this project to this council to where we are tonight has been complicated, confusing, um unclear at times, um messy might be a good description. Um so the process has been difficult. I think with some more time we can work some through some of the issues, get some clarity, get some better focus, get some more precise details on how our schools are going to be impacted, maybe some of the solutions that we can have um as far as the school impacts.

Um so I think some time um built into this for us as a council to catch up on some of the things that were kind of left blank in the process. Um, I am concerned about the traffic. Uh, it's a narrow road. It's a main street. It's important. Um, none of us like sitting in traffic. We got to figure that piece of it out. And I'm concerned about the density. I'm not opposed to housing on this particular property per se, but I think the 500 density is I know it's less than it could be, but it feels like it could be less. and it feels like we could have a some variety that included some actual affordable workforce housing as a part of it. And again, I know the developer needs to make money, but um I just I think that I think that we there's not an urgency to get this approved and get it underway. The property has been sitting there for many, many years. Um I've seen plans I've been on council five years. I saw a plan right at the beginning, a proposal. Um, so nothing is happening very quickly on this property. So I think the additional time um it's a unique piece of property. It's the only thing like it that we have in the downtown growth area, we have to put it to its very highest and best use. And there's elements of this that that make sense, but there are elements of it that do not make sense at this point. So, I'm going to concur with the delay to February and hope that we can figure this out. Thanks.

U Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. I I don't necessarily have any objection to delaying the vote. My only concern about it is is that um with the school board potentially taking over the VOTE administration building um and Mr. Manager, I don't know whether you can answer this question or not, but you know, time is a little bit of the essence because the lease runs out in 2028 and would have to be renewed. Um, and in addition to getting this project potentially through, the land transfer has got to take place and then we've got to hire somebody to go in there and do the modifications to the building to bring it up to the standards that are going to make the building functional for the schoolboard administrators and and it's my understanding that where they I mean where they are now is literally just totally unacceptable. Um, we listened to the superintendent talk about when it rains he can hear water running down the inside wall. There's not enough space on the inside. A lot of time the elevators don't work. Um, they have been very generous um to the CIP by continuing to allow us to put the building of a new school administration building into the outer years. And I think right now it's still listed um I don't know what it is in the brand new one but it was listed somewhere in the 26 to 32 uh year time frame which basically means it may or may not happen any obviously anytime soon. Um before the developer offered this profer about extending out the housing uh certificates of occupancy and not starting those for a couple of years. um obviously helps a little bit with the

school situation. It it may not completely solve it. Um but by somewhere around 20 2032, I'm hoping that we've got Elephants Fork, we got a site nailed down and we've actually got that come pretty close to having that building built. Um it was opined during another one of our public hearings that uh we had an excellent planning commission and I've often heard that we also have an excellent planning staff. Um the planning staff did recommend approval of this project and the quote excellent planning commission voted seven to one even without these additional profers to approve the project. Um I appreciate everybody that has come out and spoken about this project. Um, we have been batting this thing around since probably late August. Um, and I can promise you out of every hundred hours of free time my brain has, probably 96 hours of it have been consumed by this project. Um, and one of the things that really really bothered me about it, I agree with everybody who says that this is a gem of a piece of property. Um and it doesn't but given where it is uh and the fact that it is a gem of a piece of property it is at some point going to be developed and you know while the developer says that using the byright development is not a threat and you said that we have to maintain a relationship with them by not accepting that and saying that they're going to come back and want to do business somewhere else down the road. Is that not are we not sort of necessarily threatening back? Um, you may disagree with that and I respect that. Um,

let's see. I I just, you know, the old saying about those that don't remember history are doomed to repeat it. I I would just like to go back and remind everybody um about what's happening on Shoulders Hill Road. That property was zoned a long, long time ago, M1. Um, and for a long time, those properties sat dormant. As a matter of fact, they sat dormant for so long that the owners of the property were proposing some residential developments to take up some of those parcels because nothing was moving in the industrial sector. the citizens around the shoulders hill area um rejected those plans and said they didn't want it and wanted something else. Well, by right they were the develop the owners of the property were allowed to put warehouses and those kind of stuff in there. So that's now what you see going on there. Um the one of the things and I've said this before from this dis and I'll say it again. One of the things that I really like about a conditional resoning is that it allows the staff, it allows the council, it allows the planning commission, it allows the citizens that get engaged to engage with the developer to um make the pill, if you will, a little easier to swallow by offering concessions. And um you know I think some of the concessions that have been offered in this development as it has progressed through the cycle um I think as a little bit of a testimony to the developer listening to what the citizens um have to say. So I I'll I'll you know if if if it's the will of this council to defer it for a couple of months um I can go with losing sleep for two more months. It's sleep's

not important. Um but anyhow um you know like I said I just want to the the the by right thing was critical to me because if it couldn't be established that different uses by right could be employed um without getting any help in terms of traffic mitigation school profers anything else that that they would not have to offer if it was going to be done by right. Um even if this project is not if this project is not approved and the developer goes away and says I'm just not going to deal with it because as he said you know we really don't like to do commercial or a residential property to developer. The zoning on the property is not going to go away. it is still going to be B2 and VOTE is still going to offer it be offering it for sale and if the city can't afford to buy it or or won't buy it um then another developer can potentially come back in and say that's a nice piece of property at zone B2 here's some stuff that I can do um which includes some of the things that have been outlined by the developer so it it's it's a very tough this is one of the toughest decisions that I've certainly had to face in my time up here on council. And if anybody thinks that I don't take my responsibility to the citizens seriously, um you're you're you're mistaken. I have studied this thing every which way but loose. And while you may not agree with me that I think that maybe this project is good for this location, trust me, it is not from a lack of having studied the issue, talked to people. um talk to anybody and anybody that has talked to me, I've listened. Um so anyway, I mean I I don't know what

else I can say, but anyhow, um we've got a motion on the floor to defer it for a couple of months. So we'll see where that one goes.

Yes, M. Williams. I'm sorry. Council Williams,

you got ma'am. Thank you, M Vice Mayor. Well, first and foremost, I'd like to thank everybody who came out tonight. Um, all you speakers, um, the developers for doing an excellent job putting together a a very good, um, package. Um, citizens, I can attest and speak for everybody on the dasis here. We are listening to what you have to say. Don't think for one moment that we are up here and we're not paying attention to what you are saying. We hear you. Um I'm in agreement with the deferment um until February. Um my question to the developer is on your phases, your rollout phases, can your first roll out phase be restrictive the the 55 and older?

Yeah, we let me just clarify that one point. So the the the first units that will come online will be the age restricted units and if we got to make that point clear and the profers will do that uh in order before February but that's the intent is that the phasing schedule applies to units that will generate children not the age restricted units. So the age restricted units will come online in the first couple years and we'll make that point as clear as we can before February. All right. Thank you. Like I said, there's a motion on the floor. It's been seconded. So,

um asked the question, you said you agree with the department, but so we couldn't we can't solve the school problem. we can put something in place by way of a CIP, by way of a a good faith to try. Okay, that's that's how I think we can address it. Thank you.

Well, I have something to say and uh and I think I have the right to say something. I've been up here for a little bit. some of the things that was said um is a plan. They got to work on it. It just can't begin and all all of a sudden change. It takes time to put the CIP together, the budget together. It takes time. You just can't do this. Then we want to change and start something that if you feel it was broken, start working on it. Now what's been going on especially with I'mma call it out with the school board. What's been going on is that we have a joint meeting and when we go to the joint meeting, there's nothing accomplished. Most of y'all don't want to say it, but I'm going to say it and that's the way I feel about it. Then as a councilman, if you if don't agree, we against the children. No, that's not right. Don't hold us handcuffed. We have questions, but we some of us are not allowed to ask questions cuz some of us will go and say, "Well, he's not helping a community." That's not right. We need We need to stop that. We need to stop that. The concern was with me in the beginning

that the building that we are in, we don't want to be there. When it's 100° outside, the air condition is not working. When it's raining, maybe snowing, whatever, they got leaks. That's a concern. The other concern is if in order to renew the lease is 8 years, that's $18 million. So what we saying? You talking about saving money, but now we giving away $18 million. So how you saving or how you going to start do something different that was already wasn't doing right now we going to take it out on this development then the first thing you say it's a good development it's a good project if we going to do anything attack a bad project he giving away he ask you We have some of these these who got the hookup and I'm getting tired of that who got the hookup because these developers went out and try to attack try to address every issue what the council was concerned that their neighborhood or community was concerned because I asked and one thing about me and you can look at my record when anybody said that they didn't talk to the community. I give a thumbs down cuz I know how important that is. But here we talking about how good this developer is. Then what the council can do, we can change. You said shoulders hill road. You're right. I ride by shoulders hill road. When I'm going to peville, I look at the monster

buildings. I'm saying who in the world did I vote on that? No. It was before our time and it was by right. So they can do almost anything that we say they can do under them terms. I understand what some of y'all saying, but some of y'all saying is talking two place. I can't. What are we talking about? You talking about saving money. You Okay, we going to give $18 million up. Okay, that's saving money. Then we got to build some schools. You know what I can do? $18 million in my community, in my in my burrow. I put sidewalks through the whole pew. So what are we talking about saving? If you're going to start start on a bad project, no, we going to stop that here. But we don't have that. We got the hookup. And I said this before, if we going to make some rules, make the rules for everybody. If we going to make the rules to everybody, I'd rather for people to come. You cannot do this and suffer. You cannot do this. I'd rather have that than you come where you come here. You go to planning and the planning the planning uh deny and then we come and approve it. And most of us selected the people that we put on planning. This is politics now. It's not civic league. So if you pick somebody on planet, he should have the same idea or the respect that you have in land and property. I understand what you're saying. I understand what you want to do, but sometimes we can't do it now. And I don't know what defer I mean this is like the first defer. What? Who going to change their mind? What could they do they didn't already have done? Tell me

what they going to do different. I I would like to know what they going what can they do different. We can ask them what can y'all do different because if you you ask them what to do something they do it and then we still going to vote no. I think sometime we all have good intentions. I got that and that's why I hold back so much cuz they said I can't talk. I don't like to embarrass nobody cuz I got a little Peter in me. So what I'm saying is I just sit back. But when you start talking about something good and I think is favorable. If this project don't happen, oh that going to stop the traffic down on Main Street. The traffic is here. The the the business is here. The business is coming here. So, it's not going to stop the traffic. I don't know how the long last time y'all been in Northern Suffer on Route 17. Some places I first came here were woods or do you want growth or you don't want growth? Do you want to have the stores here or you don't want to have stores here? this this I mean it's is it's just sometime mindboggling to me that you feel that things going to disappear. It's not going to happen. People want to come to suffer. If you recall two or three years ago we had uh consultant come here and he talked about the traffic. He talked about this city and I thought I didn't hear Royal when he said it. He said 20,000 people leave the city of suffer and go to work other

places. I might be wrong with him, but I bet I'm close with it. But I know what he's talking about. Stopping this project is not going to stop them numbers. I mean, I don't I mean, I just can't figure out I You sound good. I I got to give you sound good, but some of the things are not there. And I'm I'mma do something for my friend T. You still my friend. me you don't agree on certain things but I as I can recall and y'all more detailed than I am I mean I don't know how many years ago it was overseas hospital want to leave move want to move they want the same property the city the people wanted the same property now that we talking about and me and Mr. Me and Councilman Johnson went there and we went there. They talking about river water and where is the water me where is the water mean? All right mean you go way back now. Where is the water?

Can't see it. But that's what they the same s community want a thousand emails wanted the water the same property and this was say why don't we buy why don't voc sell the property to us that was words now I'm going back me and you going back now all of a sudden this property come available to a developer who wants to help us out with a a a building that's we don't want to we don't want to pay $18 million and all of a sudden And we so much against it. Now I agree with one of the account a lot of things was not planned out right or long. I agree with you. I I I that's that's fine. But who we depend on we always are pointed at dropping the ball. And most of the time us on this council almost is agreeable. But when it comes to certain time pressure get on you and you say I'm going to listen to the community. I understand. Trust me, I do understand that. But this not this not the first time that this situation have been brought up. So it bothers me. It just bothers me. Maybe it don't bothers others, but it bothers me when we say let's do this and we can do that and uh we want to save money and we can change the the CIP, we can change the budget, we can No, I I don't think it's that easy. I really don't think you can just do that and that's easy. 30 years ago, we had outouses in certain communities. Yes, I bring it up because uh I wasn't raised like that. I didn't see a whole lot of people

talking about that part of town with my houses. I don't see that. I don't see some of the things we don't have. We have floods. Certain area have floods. But when it come to improving and people coming, all of a sudden y'all worrying about traffic. Traffic ain't stopping. You can get up here and make believe that we going to not pass this here and they going to stop the traffic. Traffic ain't stopping. You got a public down there. A public. How many cities got a public? They counting on a the people. I've been on this council when y'all want a movie house, a roller skating ring. How can if you ain't got the people here? You think they coming, you economic, they're not coming because they like you and you want it. It got to be something that brings them here. And when people talk about the traffic, most of the people here who talking about the traffic do not even live in this part of the city. They complain about 58. They complain about 50 all the tractor trailers coming. Tractor trailers the money. And I tell Mr. Council Johnson how good it look 58 which everybody complain. Yes we took a we had to suffer for a while but look at 58 now. It remind you of other states now. Change is coming and every change might not be good but when you stop the economics for coming in the city and the people let me say this here

this council changed and I'll say it once when 460 project hit Suffuk it entered our city council One thing about it, I'm good on character. I can I read people pretty well. I look at them. Okay. Yeah. And I listen what they say. When 460 came here, it was devastating to our uh council. I'm going to say it if nobody want to say it. It changed the whole way we think and vote. And some of the councilman's is still on them now. when all the people came up and and we just didn't help suff because it was about the ports. We had governors call and say please try to get that done. We had national senators call please try to get that done. We had national congress call suffer we counting on you the region. But guess what? If we would have said no, Isa White would have took it, ran with it, and them same tractor trailers we talking about would be coming in. We they wouldn't get no money, and we wouldn't getting 15 to $18 million in taxes. So, what you want? The taxes stay the same or the taxes go up cuz guess what? It cost money to get things done. I know some of y'all don't want to hear it because some of y no but I sit back and listen and observe and tell you things that was and everything you think you want sometime it's not what you want. I've seen this council in the last minute to put the budget together and we have two minutes and a certain councilman put the figure in and said let's do it with this. We don't want to

go up like a portion with 17% on taxes and and we always try to be Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Duff. We don't go up. We even went down. But now we talking about a project that going to save us $18 million. And we got to question that project. And you want to talk about tell me about saving money. You want to talk about telling administrative building that is 100 degrees, the air condition don't work. You got leaks in the building and now we are handcuffed for eight years. We have to be there. Something don't seem right to me. Then you talk about economics or if if if this where the saving tell me where the saving going to be. Tell me what this I want to know where the savings is going to be. You can't. I was in this I was in the CIP room. I was in there when they was doing it. And you know what? A lot of them things, yes, you want it, but we had to vote for what's best for the city of Suffuk. That's what you got to vote for when you're on this diet. What's best for the city of Suffuk. And I have tried to do that for every time, ever since I've been here in my burrow, out my burrow. That's what I try to do because I took more hits than anybody on this council. But who belong where and some of the things that we get hit about we cannot expose under law. So we take the hit. But a lot of things like I said we work together. We got the same thoughts we want to do. But sometime we can't do that. And that's what makes me so

upset to the point is that yes, we trying to do it, but I don't try to embarrass people. I don't I don't like all that. I don't need the cameras on me. I don't need that cuz I do. I've been doing this without cameras. But when we say we going to change this and change that, then you talk about traffic. We I'm in Northern Suffuk. I didn't came down here and when I see traffic coming down here, I said, "Wow, what? We got we got we got elementary schools we want to build." But we know we going to give $18 million up. So that's that's all right. But we just going to give 18 million for the next eight years. We got four three to four schools got to build, but we going to give $18 million away. And then we got still got to get administrative building. Where's that saving at? Got still got two two one or two more schools. Where? Tell me the savings. When we going to start saving? It can't be now. We ain't saving now. So don't say you saving, that's $18 million. I don't care how which color you call it. That's $18 million. So when we vote, whatever you do, when you vote on this, $18 million, that's gone. So when you want to say about taxes, $18 million already gone and give that to Nashville borrow cuz I sure find you. I'll find something to do with it. Oh, what would I because being how they all been neglected all of a sudden now, I'll find something to do with it. But then you talk about traffic. We cannot stop traffic. Traffic is here. I see it now. So if you don't have this project, traffic still going to be here. And I don't think we can do too much of not supporting this dilute the traffic. People are here now.

Uh I don't want to know. We got a second on Yes, there's a second. Okay. So now I think there's no more uh discussion. Members of council, would you please prepare the vote? And this for deferral, am I right? Excuse me. February

for February 18th. The motion is approved by vote of seven to zero. 15 minute break. Yep.

Okay. At this time, uh we're going to take a 15minute break and reconvene at uh what does that make it? We be reconvening at uh 9:57.

We're going to reconvene our city council meeting at this time. Uh be advised that Councilman Williams is gone for the evening and he has been excused. Uh we'll move to ordinances. We have none this evening, nor do we have any resolutions or staff reports. We do have several motions. First is a motion to schedule city council work session for Wednesday, January 7th, 2026 at 4 p.m. unless canceled by the mayor and the interim city manager. Uh council member Butler Barlow. Move to approve. Got a motion for approval. Council member Butler Barlo. Council member Recctor. Second.

Second from council member Recctor. Do we have any discussion of the motion? Hearing none. Council members prepare to vote. Please cast your vote. Madame clerk, kindly record the vote.

The motion is approved by a vote of seven to zero. Our next motion is a motion to schedule a public hearing to be held on January 7th, 2027 to amend chapter 26-4 of the code of the city of Suffach, Virginia, precincts and boundaries and burrows, Suffach Burough and Nanboro polling places and precincts and a motion would be in order. Council member Recctor so moved. Move motion for approval. Council member Recctor, Council Member Johnson. Second. Second from Council Member Johnson. Any discussion of the motion? Hearing none, council members, prepare to vote. Madame clerk, please record the vote.

Motion is approved. 507 to zero.

Okay. We'll now move to non-aggenda speakers. Uh madam clerk, do we have any non-aggenda speakers? And if so, please explain the guidelines. We do have non-aggenda speakers this evening. Each person participating under the item of business entitled non-aggenda speakers shall limit their remarks to the services, policies, and affairs of city government and shall be permitted five minutes for the purpose of presenting their matter. Speakers appearing before city council will not be permitted to participate in the following activities. To campaign for public office, engage in personal attacks, promote private business ventures, or use profanity. Speakers who violate these rules will be declared out of order by the presiding officer and will immediately yield the floor and be seated. Our first non-aggenda speaker, Arthur Elliott, 13 Church Street. Is Mr. Elliott present? Janice Balm, 502 Picon Court, representing Suburban Woods, regarding noise coming from the trucking company adjacent to the neighborhood.

Good afternoon. My name is Janice and I wanted to um get permission to have my neighbor come up stand with me as well if y'all don't mind. It's fine.

Um I'm coming to you to you for a complaint um of excessive noise that comes from the back of my property. Um we have a trucking company. Well, we have someone that's leasing out the yard to a trucking company. Well, the trucking company, the vehicles, they're like about 10 to 15 feet away from my house. The noise is like seven days a week, 24 hours a day. I have not been getting sleep. My performance at work has been gone down. I hear y'all talk about VOTE a lot. I work for VOTE and um it it's just been a night with Mayor. I'm not a complainer. I don't complain at all. I've I've been living in that house. Had that house built 23 years ago. I never had any issues. My first time I tried to go back. I wrote a letter, stuck it on the door, they read the letter, they never responded. I took off work early. I went there so that I can speak to someone. They didn't seem to care. I've been speaking with Nathan in the zoning. And he came out and he said that coming from the street, the little meter that he have, that the noise was extremely too loud. I can't sleep at night and I honestly can't. my master bedroom. I can't even sleep in my master bedroom. I have to go to the front of the house because all the headlights that comes into my house 3, 4, 5:'lock in the morning. Trucks stay on all night long. Last night I I take videos. The truck came up about 5:30. It's 15t away from my house. He's kept the truck on all night long. You got to think about all the fuming. I can't go in my backyard and enjoy my backyard anymore because of the fume smell, the diesel. It's been awful. I I'm very depressed now. I had to go out of town for Thanksgiving. I told my husband, "Just take me out of town. I need somewhere to go get some sleep." But I'm Some nights I get an hour and a half worth of sleep

cuz these guys come out 3:00, 4:00, 5:00 in the morning. They're bumping their horn. I should be able as a taxpayer should be able to enjoy my house. When they go home, they get to enjoy their house. I need my peace back. They're killing me. I'm telling you, they're really killing me. You know, I need a I'm 57 years old. My husband is 61 years old. We're not young. All of my neighbors are going through the same thing. They come back there, they play their music loud. It I can't say anymore. I just want to cry. I'm to the point now where I'm so depressed that I'm about to cry. But I need some help. I need somebody to hear me. I'm fighting to get my peace back. I just need some sleep at night. You guys, you want to go home after you done worked all day long and get some sleep? I do, too. But this noise go on 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. And I can hear the noise from the time I get to the stop sign to the time I drive in my driveway, have the windows up. That's how loud these reapfers they have. They keep the motor going all night long. This is my neighbor Daryl. He's encountering the same situation. So,

good evening, council. Um, just my name is Daryl Davis. I stay at 506 Peon Court. We're neighbors. Um, I just wanted to echo the same thing. Um, I've myself as well spoke to people within the city and um, we're calling coming here tonight um, just to ask for some relief. Uh, the trucks um, it's a health hazard. Um, anyone if you all ride through our neighborhood, all of us um, we all own our homes. Um, obviously pay taxes with workingclass people. We're just asking for some relief. We do not think that we should inhale carbon monoxide coming from uh refrigerated trailers coming out of the port and uh the trucks that are there uh coming in there are trucks with hazmat. If something was to happen to one of those trailers, whom would know how to uh uh respond to that? Yes, firefighters could come on the scene, but uh I wouldn't believe that there would there's a box anywhere with hazardous materials. No one on that site to uh react to any type of uh hazardous material incident. Um on the site, trucks are coming down Suburban Parkway from Wheelroy to Portman Boulevard. Um as the trucks are traveling back and forth from east side, the roads are very narrow. Children are walking. Um there's incidents, multiple incidents happening and um we're just saying I know my time is up, got like less than 30 seconds, but we're just asking for some relief. This is a health hazard. I'm very very afraid um that someone could get hurt and uh as I stated before um I don't know if we all did blood tests in our neighborhood, but uh we're in we're in we're inhaling carbon monoxide all the time. The noise is running. If we were to leave here right now, the trucks are

running constantly and we shouldn't have to be subjected to that. And as I stated, I had that home built. She, her husband, they built their home and all of us built it around about 2001, 2002. We were the original owners. The trucking company was not there when we came there. The trucking company recently came there within about two about a year or so to two years. So, we're just asking for relief. our time. My time is up, but thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Our next speaker is James Roland, 7685 WHville Boulevard, representing South. Our next speaker is Douglas Carter, 1230 Kansas Street, representing the Suffer Professional Firefighters Firefighters Local 2801 regarding compression compensation and benefits.

Douglas Carter, 12:30 Kansas Street. Members of council, thank you for your time tonight. I wanted to speak to you about an issue that directly affects your public safety, fiscal responsibility, and long-term stability of Suffach Fire and Rescue. Our pay, the step plan, and the consequences of continuing down our current path. This isn't just a fire department issue. This is a readiness, a staffing, and a taxpayer value issue. It's a people issue. Last meeting, it was presented that we had 296 applicants, a supposed 12:1 ratio of candidates to open positions. That is not the truth. What was originally 24 vacancies is now 30. Of the 296 applicants, we are down to 69 that have proceeded on to interviews and background checks. Historically, roughly half of those will fail the background. This is not a 12 to one. This is below a 2:1, which puts it in the same barrier as the or the high barrier or highly skilled city jobs listed previously. Engineer one through three, which was 2:1 and the city attorney position, which was 4:1. Recruitment is the canary in the coal mine while retention will become the problem that follows. Currently, we have 252 operational personnel. 150 115 or 45% have less than six years on the job. Six years ago, the least experienced firefighters we had on shift had eight years of service. This is not because people are staying longer or growth. It's because we're losing experienced members faster than we can replace them. And the financial impact of that turnover is enormous. When you include salary, benefits, PPE, uniforms, and certification, the city invests over $130,000 before a firefighter ever runs his first call. Add to that, it takes 6 to9 months to complete the hiring process and an additional year of training before they are fully deployable. You cannot replace experience with the process. You cannot fasttrack fire ground judgment and you

cannot accelerate advanced medical experience. The only fiscally responsible strategy is retaining the people we've already invested in. The step plan implemented in 2022 at 60% of what the study said was required to reach market and fix compression issues did not elimmit compression. It's continued it. It created new compression for long-erving employees. SuffK is the only regional department where a promotion will move an employee backwards. I have lived this experience myself. As I approach 15 years of service I'm effectively paid at the seven-year step. So I ask honestly which birthdays that I missed didn't count, which holidays and milestones with our families didn't matter because they have experienced all of them. It is not sustainable and it is not what we we expected. We are falling behind while we maintain a higher level of service than every other Southside regional department besides Norphick. In addition to that, Virginia Beach is already in the process of moving from a 24 to 48 hour work schedule. Norfick paramedic program is already on the 2472. This will reduce their inver individual workload by 33%. When these changes are already underway and they are completed, SUFFK's competitive disadvantage will widen dramatically and the departments making these changes will be recruiting the very people we've trained and invested in. Your own study showed the problem clearly. SOFK becomes uncompetitive after year four. Year four is when firefighters mature. When they become competent, competent, and reliable. We invest in them. We mentor them and we build them into highle medics and firefighters. And right when they become confident, competent, and capable, other cities will offer better compensation and benefits. This is not a mystery. It is predictable and is completely avoidable. In addition to the base salaries lagging, SUV also offers no stipen for many specialties, certifications or education where our peers do. The paramedic stipen, the most

critical, is half of the regional standard. While it also does not go to all suppression personnel. Elite programs require elite incentives. Right now, we receive the opposite. This is not how you maintain a high performance workforce. Fire Administration provided a 40-page assessment documenting our expanding responsibilities and insufficient staffing datasma merger. The solution is very simple. Increase the staffing and fund the step plan as it was designed. Give the personnel credit for the service they've already given the city and the citizens. Not another study but implementation. Your own data showed 91% say because of culture and the number one reason they leave is because of the compensation. culture cannot offset compensation forever. Not when the market is raising wages, reducing workload, and expanding benefits. The public expects us to performed 100% of the time. In the rain, in the heat, and in the cold, we show up. If we are expected to give 100%, it is fair to expect the city to honor 100% of the compensation your own studies have determined were necessary. Not 60%, not after another study. Mayor Duman said just last meeting, "What makes this city great? It ain't the land. It ain't the assets. It ain't the growth, it's the people. This is absolutely correct. But words without action become promises deferred and promises deferred become trust lost. Mayor Ward, you also said it's not what you say, it's what you do. Your people have sacrificed for this community. They have have earned a competitive pay. They deserve it now, not years from now. I would like to thank you for your listen your your time and for all those that have listened to us in the past. Um you obviously have a lot on your plate. Um, you had some wonderful presentations this morning and it's great to see that the Mark1 program that went into service in 2024 was able to funnel people that are vulnerable in our communities into the programs where they're absolutely needed. But the fire department, the police department, and your teachers are your infrastructure. They are vital to the success of the

next generation. I thank you and have a wonderful Christmas. Our next speaker is Robert Barrett, 1230 Kansas Street, representing the SUFFK Professional Firefighters Local 2801 regarding pay and compensation, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Mebles of Council, Mr. Manager, my name is Robert Barrett. I come here tonight as a member of Suffach Professional Firefighters Local 2801, 12:30 Kansas Street. I'm here tonight to speak about the current pay plan. I was hired March 1st, 2001. Have been a firefighter medic since 2004. I'm currently in step nine of our plan. As an employee with almost 25 years of service, I should be in step 13. The difference in these steps is around 12 a.5%. If I was in the correct step, my salary would be somewhat comparable to other localities until you consider the stipens for advanced life support providers other localities offer. These can range anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000. As an almost 25-y year employee, I'm able to operate every vehicle in our fleet to include the tiller ladder truck that y'all all probably saw in the Christmas parade. Uh I'm a medic for our tactical medical program. I'm a member of FEMA Virginia Task Force 2. I'm an education coordinator for the Virginia Office EMS. I help teach the EMT and advanced EMT uh to our recruits. I'm very involved with our infection control program. I've also been very involved with advancing our EMS program, which is leading the area. I bring years of experience that cannot quickly be replaced. With this, I'm eligible to retire March 1st, 2026. Putting me in the correct step would

almost force me to stay a few more years. I've watched many of my friends and co-workers retire either on their 50th birthday or right after reaching 25 years. We can replace a person on the staffing roster in 18 to 24 months, but we cannot replace their experience for many years. Retention is not just about keeping people from going other localities. It's also about keeping people from leaving as soon as they are eligible. And I heard something tonight about we need to do what's best for the city of Suffach. Well, that's retaining our experience. During the last council meeting, Miss Wright suggested looking for a way to start to fix some of the problems with the current plan. One simple suggestion, put us in the step we should be in. That would be a great start. In regards to the previous plan, I also heard Miss Wright say tonight that on a different subject that we have to stop approving stuff, then come back to find solutions. Well, that's what we're doing. We're back to find a solution to what was passed a few years ago. I saw a Facebook post yesterday on a fire department leadership page. I'll leave you with a quote from their post. A fire department's effectiveness is shaped as much by the decisions and support of local and elected officials as by the firefighters who respond to the calls. When that support is lacking, even the best firefighters and departments are limited. Thank you for your time tonight.

Our final speaker is Cheryl Griffin, 107 Kings Point Drive, regarding Western Tidewater homelessness. Good evening, honorable mayor, vice mayor, city council, city manager, and staff. My name is Cheryl Griffin. I reside at 107 Kings Point Drive. I'm the executive director and founder of Beacon of Hope in Western Tidewater. I was the administrator of the CAPS nightstay program for seven years and have been the director of the Suffuk Winter Shelter Hotel program for the past five years. Some of you may remember a line from a public service announcement that was on in the 60s. It's 10 p.m. Do you know where your children are? It was a reminder for parents to check on their kids before the 10 p.m. news. I find myself many nights thinking, "It's 10 p.m. Do you know where your homeless are?" I'm filled with heartbreak, anger, and frustration at the way the homeless are being neglected in our city this year. Approximately three years ago, the city was given a large grant for homelessness. There were several viable options for this money to be used for a shelter, including an almost 12,000 square foot building that could be purchased for 1.4 million and could have been used immediately with minimal if any renovations, saving the city approximately half a million on the past two years of hotel shelter alone. All that was needed was to purchase furniture, hire staff, and it would have been ready to go and could have sheltered 50 to 75 people along with a day center, offices for resources, kitchen facilities, laundry facilities. Instead, the money was used at a purchase cost of 1 million, well over the assessed value of 516,000 in 2024 to purchase a rundown motel that frankly should have been shut down years ago and bulldozed, requiring so many high-cost repairs. and two years later it is still not open. It seems that due diligence was not performed and our homeless community is paying the price, a very

high price. This project was approved by city council at the November 15, 2023 meeting over two years ago. I'm getting calls, texts, and Facebook messages constantly from people that are cold and looking for answers. These aren't young people that are addicts and don't want to work. These are elderly, handicapped, sick, and working poor that can't a can't find affordable housing. Some are fortunate enough to sleep in cars, some heated and some not. But most are sleeping outside wherever they can find. While some of you can turn away and sit in your heated homes and sleep in your warm beds, I can't. I have run a shelter for the past 12 winter seasons, and it is much more than a job to me. I did it for three years as a volunteer and would have continued to do it without pay if needed. I've met these people, heard their stories, and cried with them. I cannot look away and ignore it. I've had several in the past that were so sick that they died shortly after shelter ended, and even a couple during the season. How many of you went and stood outside for even five minutes Monday morning when the temperatures were in the teens with a chill factor of nine? I did, and it was brutal. That's when I made the decision to come speak despite my fear of speaking. My chest is pounding. Somebody needs to speak for those that can't and not just complain on Facebook or social media. As I tried to type this with fingers that were still numb from just a few minutes outside, I got even more upset. I can't begin to imagine what it's like trying to sleep with temperatures in the teens and a chill factor below the teens. We have experienced record low temperatures very early in the season this year, and it is expected to continue to be a very cold winter. While thankfully CAPS will be open with their rotating shelter for eight weeks this winter, it will still be a couple of weeks before they open. And I'm sure they will agree that it is not the ideal accommodation for the elderly or handicapped. It is indeed a great respit from the cold for many people, but for those with disabilities

or mental health issues, some will not be able to utilize it. Our homeless community is literally freezing in the streets of Suffach. This would be bad enough if there were no options, but it is totally inexcusable when there are. I'm not trying to make anybody mad or be critical, but enough is enough. I'm begging you to please consider opening something immediately. Beacon of Hope and Western Tidewater offered via email on December 1st to open temporarily until your shelter is ready. And the response was, I quote, "You are free to operate your winter shelter program with any funds that you may have raised." Anybody familiar with nonprofits knows that a small nonprofit does not have tens of thousands of dollars sitting in an account, especially one that only operate seasonal shelter off of grants. I offered my services as a solution two weeks ago. It is your responsibility as our city leaders to protect our citizens, homeless people included, and allowing people to freeze in the street is unacceptable. How do you think our community will react when an elderly person is found dead from hypothermia when there are so many options to protect them? These folks are much more than just homeless people. These are our mothers, our fathers, our children, our brothers and sisters, and even our grandparents. Please, please do something now. Thank you for allowing me to speak and I hope you all have a merry Christmas.

That concludes our speakers. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Uh, do we have any additions to tonight's agenda? No, sir. Hearing none. Do we have any new business items for consideration that require the action of city council?

Hearing none, we'll move to announcements and comments. And at this time, I'll ask if the communications department has any announcements. Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, members of council, city manager. I'll start the announcements off tonight with a reminder that the city of Suffach will observe the upcoming Christmas holiday and the offices will be closed on Wednesday, December 24th at noon and will reopen on Monday, December 29th at 8:30 a.m. In addition, city offices will also be closed on Thursday, January 1st in observance of the New Year's holiday and and will reopen on Friday, January 2nd at 8:30 a.m. Trash and recycling collection will operate on a one-day delay for both holidays and Suffach Transit will not operate on Christmas Day or New Year's Day. And speaking of office closures, the treasurer's office would like to inform citizens that on Wednesday, December 31st, the treasurer's office will be closed to the public due to a turnover audit required by state law. On this day, staff will be available by phone to answer questions and provide assistance. However, no transactions can be processed during the audit. Any transactions not completed prior to the start of the audit will be processed on January 2nd, 2026. For more for more information, please contact the treasurer's office. On December 3rd, the economic development team celebrated a ribbon cutting for the new Bonsor's Women's imaging center in Harborview. This new facility will provide advanced women's imaging services, offering critical life-saving care close to home for SUFFK residents and their families. We thank Bonsor's Women's Imaging for their investment in our community and for expanding access to highquality healthcare in Suffach. On December 11th, Sheriff David Miles held his official swearing in ceremony inside the Godman courthouse. Family members, friends, colleagues, and city

leaders were in attendance as he took his oath of office serving the Suffach community. Congratulations, Sheriff Miles, and thank you for your leadership and service to the sheriff's department. And Suffach Public Library continues to expand its role supporting the community beyond books. The library is excited to share that they now offer free inbuilding food and hygiene pantries at both Morgan Memorial Library and North Suffach Library. Available during all open hours. These pantries provide non-p perishable food, hygiene items, and period kits with no form, no requirements, and no questions asked. Anyone may take what they need and leave what they can. In addition, a 24-hour little pantry is located outside the Chuckatuck library, providing around the clock access to essential items. These pantries are stocked through community donations and library support. Donations of non-p perishable food and hygiene items are always welcome during regular library hours. For more information, visit suffachpublic library.com/food securitycurity. The Department of Public Utilities advises residents that they are continuing work on the water service line inventory as required by EPA lead service line regulations. Similar to last year, notification letters will be mailed in December to addresses with services service lines identified as unknown material, lead material, or galvanized material that is downstream of a lead service line. As field work continues and more service lines are identified, the number of unknown service lines is expected to decrease. For more information, please call the public utilities department at 757-5147000. The city of Suffach public safety committee would like to remind all residents about the public safety portal. This online platform let citizens share suggestions to improve community safety with anonymous submissions. Welcome. Please note that

this portal is not for reporting crimes and always call 911 in the in the event of an emergency. For more information about the public safety committee or the portal, visit sufficva. us. And have you spotted the two North Pole elves hiding in Suffach parks? Meet Cookie and Sugar Plum. Throughout December, Suffach Parks and Recre has been posting daily hints from these elves at 10 a.m. on Facebook and Instagram. Follow these clues and you might discover a special holiday surprise tucked away amongst the trees, trails, or playgrounds. For more information, follow Suffach Parks and Wreck on social media to see where they will pop up next. And the elves are not the only thing spreading holiday cheer in Suffach. The holidays are well underway and I'm excited to share a festive recap of the exciting events that brought our city to life this year. Let's dive in and relive the magic. Heat. Heat.

And once again, On your screens are the various ways residents can stay connected to the city of Suffach happenings. Thank you and have a great evening. Okay. Thank you, Miss Moore. We now move on to announcements from city council and we are going to start with council member Butler Barlo. Thank you, Mayor. Um, I just want to say merry Christmas and happy new year and see you in 2026. Good night. Council member Bennett.

Thank you. Uh, I would just like to thank all the people that came out tonight and um had their comments and um our public safety people. Thank you all for coming and also giving your concerns to us to look at and uh you know tonight I'm I'm going be brief but I just want to say something about this. We had some presentation tonight from very important people to me which is CAP for kids and West Tire Waterfree Clinic and all those people. They have a big part they play in our city with helping the needed and I cannot uh give them enough thank you for all that they do in our neighborhoods in our community to help the people that's in need. And with that, I would say merry Christmas and happy new year to all and be safe and enjoy and don't forget the reason for the season.

Council member Johnson. And I'll be just as brief. Merry Christmas to everyone. Let's look forward to 2026. Pretty brief. Council member Wright, I just want to thank everyone who came out to speak tonight. um wish Ron Williams a happy retirement. For the time that I've been in the city, and it's been 26 years, I've always written my uh checks to Ron Williams, so I don't know how that's going to work out for me starting next year, but I just wish him happy retirement and merry Christmas to everyone. Council member Rtor,

thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm going to also be brief, but I do want to address Mr. Davis's concern and the other neighbor from Suburban Woods. Um, Mr. Manager or that interim city manager, I know we've been working on this for a little bit. Um, I think the last time we talked about it, we were trying to get some help from the courts um to try to do something to mitigate this issue, but I don't know whether there's anything we can do to speed the process up. But I mean, this has been going on, you know, as we know, for a good while. Um, so if we can do something to address that, that would be extremely gratifying, I'm sure, to the people in that neighborhood. Um, and with that, I will say merry Christmas to all and to all a good night and hope everybody has a good, safe uh holiday season and we'll see you next year.

Vice Mayor Ward. Okay. First, I want to thank the clerk, the audio team and city manager, Mr. Hughes, for helping me out on tonight. Uh, Williams retire me and show he's been all many years. You can tell by the people that was there top level. I mean, people from all over. Uh, ser I'm swearing I went there also and city manager. Yes. Um I've talked to Mr. Davis myself and I had him to get in contact uh former city man Al Moore. So I don't know I didn't know if it still was going on but that's something I was see what can we can do because like you said council director this been ongoing. What can we do to help them out? Help the whole community out. We can ask Merry Christmas. Happy New Year to everybody. God bless. Okay, I'll be um quick. I don't know how brief I'll be, but I'll be quick. We talked about Bond Secures, the women's imaging center over in Northern Suffk. I mean just another outstanding facility and they've been a great blessing to um in enabling us to provide or them to provide the most updated medical care that they possibly can and so that's a very welcome addition there. Um I want to mention the Chuck Tuck wording club. I attended their 95th anniversary celebration in Chuck Duck. Congratulations to them. Uh the Rotary holiday auction was very successful and I want to thank everyone who donated and also bid on items there. Sheriff Miles investigure just a great show up of you

know individuals um there to recognize and honor him uh in his election. Uh SUFFK Sister Cities had their annual meeting at Oakland Christian. Thank them for everything they do during the course of the year. Um I and Councilman Recctor were at the Albert G. Horton VA cemetery for their le Ruth wreath laying ceremony. Uh we've been probably the last four or five years or so. They laid close to 14,000 wreaths out there. They now have over 20,000 uh veterans in turn there. And they do an awesome job. And um it's kind of a feather in our hat to to even imagine that that facility is here in our city. And um we probably need to get a little bit more involved. The holiday parade, uh I want to thank um our police department for once again, you know, they're the ones well they in parks and wreck, but probably the police department more so. You know, the the time and effort and personnel that they put into, you know, it looks easy, but you know, I come in one way and go out the other way. That's a lot of streets to block off, a lot of traffic to direct. And you know, having officers there, you know, one thing about our events, I think everybody always feels safe. Uh we get to play with some of the new stuff we got out there. So, we get the trikes going, the ballers going, and uh every one of them are uh worth the money because we're sure getting the job done. Uh Ron Williams retirement, 44 years of service is an astounding record. Um, Phil Ferguson said he has 44 years also and a couple extra months going in there. So, I'll let them fight it over that. I had the pleasure of being with uh Clinton Rudy and Gary Jones today. We went through, you know, I got to tour the library where we are right now and it just blew my mind. I mean, absolutely. You know, I knew it

was going to be impressive, but when I got inside of it, it absolutely blew my mind because you don't have any perception of exactly what 37,000 square ft looks like when you're blowing down Washington Street and just looking at the front of it. But the design, the openness, it's it's just going to be a marvelous um asset for our citizens and and I can't wait for it to open. So, great job to everybody who had something to do with that. And that's pretty much all I got. I mean, we can talk about last year and it was a lot, you know, it was kind of a long year. I think we got a lot done. I'm looking forward to next year. Um, you know, working with everybody, trying to make the decisions that we need to make, um, thinking about the 106,000 folks we got, the limitations we have, uh, the ability to do certain things and not do certain things. And I say, everybody's here, uh, with the best of intentions. There's no question about that. Uh so I'm looking forward to another good year next year. And with that, uh we'll use my quote of the night is one I'll probably use three, four, five times because I like it. It's from Benjamin Franklin. Uh first I want to wish everybody a a very uh merry Christmas and a safe, enjoyable, prosperous new year. And my Benjamin Franklin quote for the night is rather short, but is that be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and this is the part that I like. And let every new year find you a better man. And with that, I will ask for a motion for adjournment. Council member Butler Barlo.

So moved. And a motion for adjournment from council member Labaro. Council member Bennett. Second from council member Bennett. Council, any discussion? Hearing none, council members, prepare to vote. Please cast your vote. Madame clerk, please record the vote. The motion is approved by a vote of 7 to zero. This meeting stands adjourned. Didn't wear my