The Hampton Roads Planning District Commission (HRPDC) held its regularly scheduled meeting on May 16, 2019.  A summary of actions and discussions that took place at this meeting is provided below:

Regional Branding Initiative

Reinvent Hampton Roads has raised funding to support the Regional Branding Initiative Project.  This initiative will help our region answer important questions, such as:

• What is Hampton Roads reputation in the world?
• Do people know who we are?
• Do they know where we are?
• For those who know us, what do they think about us?\
• Does our reputation help or hurt us in attracting visitors, new residents and new business investment?

The goal of this effort is to come together as a region to address these questions in a thoughtful, thorough and collaborative way through the Hampton Roads Regional Branding Initiative (RBI).  The RBI will include the region’s leading organizations, government, business, non-profit, education and other critical community stakeholders from all across Hampton Roads – 17 local governments and over 1.7 million people.  The collaboration will be supported by a comprehensive research effort and culminate with a positioning, communications strategy and naming architecture to more seamlessly advance our region as an attractive place to live, work, play, learn and visit.

Regional Inventory of Coastal Resiliency Projects

HRPDC Senior Regional Planner Ben McFarlane briefed the Commission on the Regional Inventory of Coastal Resiliency Projects.  The HRPDC Coastal Resiliency Committee endorsed the development of a regional inventory of local and regional coastal resiliency projects to help:

• Document the need for state and federal financial assistance to localities by collecting information on the number and cost of needed but unfunded projects.
• Identify possible opportunities for coordination and collaboration between localities.
• Demonstrate to the public and to decision-makers at all levels of government that localities in Hampton Roads are making progress on addressing recurrent flooding and sea level rise.

The HRPDC staff has worked with locality staffs to collect information from localities on resiliency projects, programs and policies.  The information includes project types, costs and status and has been incorporated into an online mapping application hosted on the HRPDC’s regional GIS portal, HRGEO.org  To date, the database includes information on over 300 local projects.

HRPDC Work Program for Fiscal Year 2020

The HRPDC prepares a Work Program for the upcoming year and presents the proposed program to the Commission for consideration each May.  Keith Cannady, HRPDC Deputy Executive Director, provided an overview of the proposed Work Program to the Commission.  This document outlines the work activities that the HRPDC staff will undertake in support of the Commission and the member localities from July 1, 2019 to June 30, 2020.  It is the result of input from the seventeen local governments served by the HRPDC and applicable State and Federal planning and regulatory requirements.  Much of the work included in the Work Program evolves from the local committees that serve in an advisory capacity to the HRPDC.

The Commission took action to approve the HRPDC Work Program for FY2020, pending public review and comment.

Fiscal Year 2020 Budget

Sheila Wilson, Chief Financial Officer, presented the Fiscal Year 2020 Budget to the Commission.  The Joint HRPDC/HRTPO Personnel and Budget Committee met on April 18, 2019 and May 16, 2019 to review the proposed FY2020 HRPDC/HRTPO Budget.  Ms. Wilson reviewed the following information with the HRPDC:

• Historical Budget Trend Report with Bar Charts
• FY2020 Budget/Summary
• Fund Balance Report
• Member Dues and State Allocation Trend Report
• Local Jurisdiction Contributions Spreadsheet
• Revenue Pie Chart by Funding Source
• Expenditure Pie Chart by Program
• Reserves

The HRPDC/HRTPO Personnel and Budget Committee recommended approval by the HRPDC and HRTPO Boards.  The Commission took action to unanimously approve the Budget proposal as presented.

Consent Agenda Items

The HRPDC took action to approve a number of Consent Agenda Items including the following:

• On-Call Consultant Services Contracts for the following HRPDC Program Areas:
  • Regional Construction Standards Program 
  • Special Legal Consultant on Stormwater Matters
  • Regional and Environmental Planning and Analysis
  • Sanitary Sewer Overflow Reporting System Support
  • Hampton Roads Fats, Oils and Grease Online Certification Support
  • Permit Application and Review Systems Support

Next Meeting

The next meeting of the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission will be held on July 18 beginning at 12:30 pm at the Regional Building located at 723 Woodlake Drive in Chesapeake.