The session for the Council of the City of Norfolk will now commence. Mr. Roberts. The floor is yours. Thank you. Mayor. Vice mayor, members of city Council. I'd like to take just a few moments and provide an overview of the proposed agenda for this afternoon's work session meeting. The first presentation will be the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference or mIAC tournament update. That presentation will be provided by Miss Sonya Stills, commissioner with Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, and that presentation will be followed by a brief legislative activity update by Brian Pennington, director of government relations for the City of Norfolk. We have a handful of items following that that will require consideration of a closed session motion. So without objection or amendments, I would like to invite to the lectern the Sonya Stills, commissioner with the mIAC Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference. To welcome the. I know everybody. I thought it was a pep rally, so I needed it. And let's get peppy, you know? So I want to thank Mayor Alexander and City Manager Patrick Roberts and, uh, our key people that have have worked with us in our space. And, uh. Rob Hinson, I will say, Rob, today, I'm surprised because usually he has my graphics up, but y'all got it. So I'm gonna back on up. So but I appreciate it. You know, this is our 14th year that we've been here in the city of Norfolk. Yes. That's right. Yes. I have to learn how to do that. I'm ready for 14 more. Give me something I can give to the president as we ready to roll? So, um, you know, everybody has the, um, event schedule, events of what we got going on, um, tournament week. We have a couple of new things that we've done. Um, Monday, we're going to have our Women in Athletics workshop in the locker room. We're really excited with that. Um, and it's open to any women who are interested in athletics or just interested in leadership. It's basically what it is. We have coach as our keynote, somebody from coach for our keynote. So it's open to anybody who's open to learning about leadership and athletics and how that, um, coincide. We have another couple of events that we have, um, which is the overtime brunch that's new. You know, we want to send them off with some good food. And so we're really happy about that. And we've added, you know, I can't read this. It was something else we added that's new. Um. Another party. You know, we want them to have everything for everybody. Um, particularly our young alumni. So that's been our focus. Um, and so we've been trying to do, sir, that that's this this is the second year for the R&B block party, and that's been a great, great partnership with the city. Um, really, really like that. So we're hopefully that will expand to more people. I mean, when I saw the pictures, I'm like, why wasn't I out there? It was it was awesome. So, um, I really, really enjoyed that. Um, again, our community service event, which is our re with the mIAC, with the public city schools. This is my gym. I always love that. And so we're really, um, excited about bringing that party to the students and, and celebrating what they're doing as far as reading and encouraging that. And so, um, we look forward to bring the cheerleaders to DJ and the mascots for them to really, really enjoy themselves. And then last, um, I want to talk about, um, oh, national exposure. ESPN will be on ESPN again. The men's game will be on ESPN two, and then our women will be on ESPN news. Okay. And I think the it'll be broadcast again on ESPN plus. Yep. That's it. Um, then also, the other things that we're doing, um, in the city of Norfolk is our softball championship and our outdoor track championship. So we want to make sure that we're continuing to bring more of our events here to the city of Norfolk is very important. As you know, we have all of our teams to stay in the city of Norfolk because it's very important that we contribute back to the economic impact for the city. And so we want to continue to do that. And with that said, I'm not going to hold you up, Mr. Dedeaux. Did I miss anything? He's my deputy commissioner. Um, he's my legacy. So when I step away, you already have a familiar place. You know, I. Ain't. Going nowhere right now. I'm not. Going nowhere. I'm here. Matter of fact, I moved to the city of Norfolk this year. I'm back. I had a short, short stint in Virginia Beach, but I know I'm coming back to Norfolk, so I am thoroughly enjoying downtown Norfolk in all its splendor. Right over there by the pagoda right beside the ship. I loving it so. Well, do you have any questions for me. Or suggest Mr. Quick just to dispel aroma, I was asked earlier today if the Miyake was leaving and going to Baltimore, and I said, well, they just signed a contract to extend last year and why would they go to where the CAA is? But if you could verify that. So that person that asked me hopefully would watch this and know that the mIAC is with us. We are in our second year of our three year cycle, right? So naturally we have to do our RFPs which will come after this tournament, probably like April. We'll send out our RFPs. Of course, the city of Baltimore has been courting and, uh. But right now I say no. No. No, not right now. Just like you just. Okay. Okay. No. So, you know, my heart's here. Our homes. Here. All right. She's loving it. Uh, I'm loving it. The the, um. Our headquarters is here, so it's like, this is. It's been home, and the the tournament has grown so much here in the city. It's so welcoming. Um, so, um, listen up, y'all. It's up to us. I like that. But we have not committed to anybody right now. Thank you. Okay. Does that help? That helps a whole lot. Okay. All right. Any other questions? Well, thank you for all you do. And, uh, we really appreciate your energy and the partnership and the collaboration, and we'll look forward to it continuing. Absolutely. Thank you all. Thank you so much. I'm gonna slip out because we got work to do. Obviously you. Thank you. All right. Mr. Pennington has your next presentation. Thank you. Thank you. Council, and I really appreciate having the opportunity to come home. See you tonight. And, uh, it's nice to be back. It feels good. Um, I don't think the press has done a good job of articulating just how fast paced the General Assembly session has been, but it has been fast paced with a lot of activity, lots of good discussion. And as a student of public policy, it's been fun for me to be there as your representative, trying to keep an eye on things as best I can. I have about a ten minute presentation that I'm going to stick to just the facts, and we'll be happy to answer any questions. I have primed our talented city attorney's team here. If there's any technical questions that might come up on some of the legislation that we highlighted towards the end of the presentation, we can certainly field some of those questions. So do I have the clicker up here? Am I? That's it. Okay. As I said, ten minutes. This is a presentation overview. We're going to update you on all of Norfolk requested legislative bills and our budget amendments. I'm going to provide a very brief, quick summary on what the budget proposals are looking at and looking like in the respective chambers. We're also going to highlight a few, maybe 4 or 5 different local government related important what we feel are important type of legislative bills that we want to call to your attention. You know it. Cross over. If I could remind you, this is when the House sends their bills over to the Senate and the Senate over to the House. They're still working on the final edits on the budget. So they've got a little bit more time on that. But all the bills that remain are the ones that are live. And so we can kind of get narrowly focused on the legislation that's important to us. So an update on our specifically requested legislative amendments. I am disappointed that we were unable to pass Senate Finance on what I called our most important priority this session, which was the Uh, creation of a non-federal match fund for flood mitigation projects. Uh, we've been referred back to the subcommittee. We're going to go at it again. We've had very positive dialogue with a lot of the Joint Subcommittee on Recurrent Flooding members. I'll have to talk to my boss about it a little bit further, but there was an idea of the subcommittee, uh, maybe coming down to Norfolk and taking a closer look at some of our projects and giving us an opportunity to show them what we're able to do with some of the resources that we've been able to muster thus thus far. Um, our second legislative bill, uh, is the state owned bottomlands. Now, this might sound like a boring bill, but actually, there really is a deficiency in current, uh, governance as it relates to state bottom land. The state maintains control and ownership of all of the waters that are all the land is under the water. And so in Norfolk's case, we have the SRM project. There's over 100 plus different easements that we need for the bottom lands, and it's very onerous. It takes a lot of time, a lot of money. And so we are trying to wrap all of those authorizations under one authorization. Again, there would be no short cutting of any federal environmental permitting requirements or otherwise. This is just more of like a, you know, paperwork kind of a thing. And we've calculated this saves up to $2 million a year for us in time that we won't have to spend pursuing all of these. So this is pretty important to us. We had a companion bill on the House side, Delegate Hernandez. So this one's just to not go too far in the weeds. We proposed it as a legislative bill. The Senate Finance Committee said, we don't want to do a legislative bill. That's a temporary fix, if you will, because we just were not able to answer all of the multiple agency questions on this one. So what we have now in both the House and and the Senate are legislative bills that have been converted to budget authorizations, and that will give us exactly what we need. Over the next couple of years. On the near term authorizations. But we will be plugging into a larger stakeholder group to get a more permanent type of a fix. The the good thing is that the Governor Spanberger administration recognizes that there's a deficiency in their current organizational structure and how to deal with these larger scale flood projects. And so we've had really good partnership with them thus far, and I'm very confident about coming back next year to get the permanent fix that we'll need for the project. Now the next bill is SB 305. This was patron by Senator Williams Graves. We also have Delegate Askew who was carrying the pay the uh companion bill HB 147. This is a request to change your city charter amendment. And just very quickly, uh, some of the zoning designations and older properties that never change ownership. Uh, they are continue to exist under grandfathered uses, and it's not in good form, and keeping with the surrounding neighborhood. So this would really help us tremendously with trying to at least get that process going. Um, both of those bills have unanimously passed, so it looks like we have a city charter bill that's going to be approved by the governor, and we'll be able to get moving on some of the properties that we've preliminarily identified. Uh, next priority bill for us was Senator Williams Graves, again, SB 197. Uh, this was a deferment of interest and requirement of repayment on CFP loans. And and so Norfolk was really successful participating in the CFP program. We got a CFP grant, which is better than a loan, as you know, just recently. And so we took the lead in pushing this one forward, because in the cumulative, if we continue to be the number one local government subscribing to these funds, it not only helps us, it helps all the other local governments that are trying to plug their dollars back into the project, as opposed to paying interest fees. Last legislative bill that we requested was Patron by Delegate Anthony. This was the bill. I'll just quickly remind you that dealt with, uh, residents who live in, um, in rentals where the, um, the utilities are also included in the rental payment, but there's no division that's provided. And so it was there was several Norfolk citizens and some of our town hall meetings that we were going to tell us they couldn't access the program because they didn't have the authorities, uh, to be able to bring out the information to participate. And so, uh, the bill passed the House. It was a squeaker down the party line. Um, it's now over in the Senate, and General Laws is going to be heard tomorrow afternoon. Uh, I don't have any reason to believe that the bill should not pass, but this is an unusual General Assembly session, so we'll just keep an eye on it. Uh, I'll plan to testify along with our friends at Virginia First Cities. And I believe Richmond and Portsmouth and a few others are interested in helping us with this one. So, uh, thanks again to Councilwoman Johnson for her leadership on this. This is the bill that actually she worked on over the summer with us to bring forward. So we're doing our best council and we'll see what we'll see what happens. Uh, very quickly, the last two, we, uh, advanced two budget amendments. Senator Williams grace put in 50 million. This is for that Commonwealth, uh, non-federal match fund program that, unfortunately, we don't have the authorization. But that doesn't mean we can't still ask for the money. And so our budget amendment is still alive, is still being considered. So we'll see what happens. And then again, um, Norfolk is the number one subscriber to the CFP. And we're so popular that all of our fellow local governments in Virginia are kind of like, you guys are getting all the money you got to help us. And so we're trying to help. This is a regional request as well, and we hope that we're going to get this passed. There's a lot of competing budget priorities, but I will say that our General Assembly members, at least in Hampton Roads, are listening to us about flooding. They're trying to help us where they can. Okay. Very quickly, I didn't get into the weeds because this is still a working document, but I just wanted to give you a flavor of what's happening between the two competing budgets. In the Senate version, they propose ending the data center sales tax exemption. That was a big surprise. That's also like over $1 billion of savings right there. So remember that big Medicaid thing? We were looking where how they're going to fill that. They removed that data center exemption as one proposal. The up they upped the tax rebates for individuals and joint filers increased the standard deduction. They protected Medicaid funding to the extent that they could. They've included a 3% annual teacher raise that does not require local match. How about that. That's kind of exciting. So that's ongoing in the discussion. 50 million for affordable housing will take it. We're happy to have it. The need is huge. So any progress is good progress. We're continuing to to make that progress. The one that's kind of a surprise for me is the Hampton Roads person. Is the singled out appropriation here for the Metro up in the DC area for their transit systems. They gave them a pretty substantial appropriation here. Over and above what we would have. But this goes to why the HRT and a lot of folks in our region have been advancing this study to take a closer look at how we go about funding our transit in the budget. It was called Affordable Virginia budget. That's the theme that they're trying to pursue as best as possible. They have made larger investments in the housing trust fund than the Senate did. They do have broader work protections and labor initiatives than the Senate. I could go on and on about them, but I'll save you. It's still an ongoing discussion, and most of those discussions are not really necessarily happening in the committee room. So it's just ongoing discussion. They do backfill the federal reductions in health health care reductions that we were forecasting and the Snap benefits. So both are emphasizing the affordability education and health care. Senate again ends the data center. But it provides that metro funding in the house, its deeper housing investments and labor focus, and all of the legislation, as the mayor will tell you, is pretty much teed up to go to conference for their further deliberations as it relates to public education. I mentioned to you, the Senate, everybody seems to feel really good about this three, 3% teacher pay raise, especially because there's not a requirement for local match. So looking good so far in the Senate. Additional 627 million for K through 12 in the House, 400 million of flexible K-12 funding. They've prioritized, uh, early childhood education. Um, the big one I would point out here is workforce grants. That's a pretty sizable investment for workforce that the state really. I don't know, mayor. I haven't seen him do that before. So I'm hoping that reconciles with a lot of we're trying to do with workforce development. So that also looks pretty good heading forward. I've already mixed in most of this. The thing here, and I'll point out to you, Councilwoman Johnson, is, uh, they've appropriated 13 million for eviction prevention and 17 million. I didn't capture it. Right, but they actually would create a department or idea of how they're going to do statewide programs to deal with this. So that kind of bubbled out through the budget process, not through the legislative process. It was kind of a neat one that I wanted to point out. Uh, now moving on. I've got three minutes left on my presentation according to my clock. Uh, quickly, the cannabis retail sales, the regulatory framework, those bills have passed. There's still there's going to be going to conference for some discussion. Um, no need for me, really to go into any further other than to say that it does not contemplate that there would be any local government checkoff for these businesses to operate in the city. They'll be able to do it statewide. Um, really, the discussion has to do with how much authority local governments will have as it relates to the the co-location of the businesses. And then there's some discussion over what the the actual sales tax rate will be and how much of that would be shared with the local government, the hosting local government. These bills are HB 642, XC and SB 542 Arid. Those are the two vehicles for cannabis legislation. Uh internet gaming. iGaming, also known as iGaming, directly impacts all casino host local governments that have made agreements with their casino operators to effectively provide a revenue share for their operations. Uh, under current legislation, uh internet Gaming does not contemplate any revenue sharing with the local host government. All the revenues will be going to the state general fund. The mayor's weighed in on this with the patron. Uh, personally, there's ongoing discussions at a at a very high level. Um, we have articulated the city's position as best as we can with the patrons, and we're waiting for our General Assembly to provide guidance on this particular issue. Anything further? Mayor. Okay. Okay. Um. Local option by voter referendum. 1% sales tax for school construction. There were several bills with all kinds of different flavors and variety of ideas. The last one that has remained is HB 334 Rasul. It's going to be going to Senate Finance to be considered pretty soon. Um, this legislation, we took a closer look at it in the city attorney's office and, um, it, uh, you you don't necessarily have to ask for 1%. It's up to you can't exceed 1%. It does require voter referendum. Uh, Mari High School would be an eligible project under this legislation if passed in its current form. So that could potentially be something very helpful for council to consider, you know, moving forward, moving forward. Uh, there will be some additional tweaks, but I can say that a lot of General Assembly members are actually sympathetic, especially when folks started bringing in the data on the the facilities, the average age of facilities across the Commonwealth. It was actually pretty alarming how old our public schools are. So this is aimed to help fix that. And then the last topic, uh, there's all kinds of things dealing with workforce. And we mentioned most of it we're interested in is the budget driving the big one that I wanted to call to your attention, because it's kind of out of the ordinary. It's a bill called SB 454. The patron is Van Valkenburg. Uh, this is a bill that aims, as they claim, to create ways to enhance or incentivize affordable housing. But in conferring with the city attorney and the deputy city attorney and a whole lot of other local governments that are taking a closer look at this bill as it's currently introduced as a substitute. Um, there's a lot of taking of local authority involved in this particular one, and without spending too much time on it. Just the facts, if you will. I'm not sure that the provisions under this legislation would actually be helpful to the city of Norfolk and what we're trying to do specifically. So in consultation with the city Attorney's office and all of our local government associations, we are opposed to this legislation. It's passed crossover. Um, there's, uh, a good chance that it could go forward. We'll have to figure out what exactly that means. But I wanted to bring it to council's attention that that actually is out there. And that concludes my presentation. Just mention the constitutional amendments. Three will be on the ballot in November, and one will be on a special ballot in April dealing with redistricting. Uh, if you want to touch on all four of them. You caught me cold, sir. All right. So, um, blessed. To be, uh. I wasn't ready for that one. So, um, there will be the General Assembly, because you have to have an intervening election, which we had and voted in passing both chambers constitutional amendments that will appear this year on ballots. One will be in April. That's the redistricting redrawing the congressional districts. So that's going to come up fast as early as April. The three others will be on the November general general election. One would be the automatic restoration of voting rights. Second would be marriage equality. And wait, Carlos and the then the the other would be reproductive rights, reproductive care. So the right to abortion, they will all be on the ballot in November. So I just thought I would mention that that's. Another. Point of. Why we thought moving local elections to November, because you're muddying state and national issues with local elections should have kept them in May. I think there's some buyer value for some of those who wouldn't. Yeah. We. So that's going to be on the ballot. So just remember on the ballot there. And in that vein there are several provisions that I would categorize as unfunded mandates as it relates to election administration. So there might be some staffing requirements that come your way and some additional reporting requirements as it relates to elections. All right. There there are other legislation we're tracking. And um, but we will continue to monitor and track the legislation as well. Any questions for, uh, Brian before. This I wondered how are you thinking about. This Mr.. Yeah. Move that. Members of the council assemble informally in closed meeting on February 24th, 2026 or 420 7:00. For the purposes of are set out in clauses 29, one and 29. Subsection A of section 2.2, Dash 3711 of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, as amended. Clause 29 discussion of the contract matter. The city owned property in Ward two super Ward six, where discussion and an open forum would adversely affect the negotiating strategy of the public body. Clause one discussion board, commission, authority and committee appointments. Clause 29 discussion of the lease amendment matter on property and Ward four support. Ward seven Ward discussion and open meeting would adversely affect the bargaining position of the public body. Mr.. Clanton. Mr.. Mrs.. Johnson, a. Mr. pays a mr. Spiegel. Mr.. Thomas. Doctor Alexander. We're in close.