Renovations to the Virginia Beach building where a mass shooting took place last year have been delayed.
Due to the pandemic, city officials don’t have enough money to pay for it right now.
In a letter this week, the mayor of Virginia Beach asked the General Assembly to consider allocating $10 million toward the renovations of Building 2.
City staff believed in March state legislators were prepared to give Virginia Beach money for the project in a roundabout way, but then the coronavirus started to wreak havoc on the economy. It didn’t happen after all.
Mayor Bobby Dyer hopes legislators will reconsider during a special General Assembly session scheduled for Aug. 18 to discuss how COVID-19 impacted the budget as well as criminal and social justice reform.
Dyer told the Hampton Roads delegation that the funding would help complete the project faster so workers wouldn’t be displaced even longer. Employees who worked in the building where 12 people were killed and four were critically injured during the May 31, 2019, mass shooting have been working at home and in offices dispersed across the city.
The city plans to turn Building 2 into the headquarters for the police department and then renovate several other buildings to bring former Building 2 employees back to the municipal center so the Departments of Public Works, Public Utilities and Planning can once again offer citizens services in one place.
Del. Barry Knight, who represents Virginia Beach and Chesapeake, said the Building 2 renovations are unlikely to be a funding priority, but he supports Dyer asking for it.
“I think it is going to be a hard sell,” Knight said. “We are all going to try to help, but what are the odds of it happening? I would say less than 50%.”
“It is not going to stop us from asking, pushing and trying,” he added.
The General Assembly froze $2.2 billion in funding due to fears that state revenues would be lower as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Virginia Beach also has paused spending while it waits to see the financial impacts of the pandemic. In May, the council decided to place $30 million for the Building 2 renovation into a reserve fund and said it would not be spent until the city ensures “cash flow is sufficient pending improvement of the economy.”
Knight, who is on the House Appropriations committee, said no senator or delegate knows right now what the state’s revenues will be or if they will be able to submit budget amendments.
Secretary of Finance Aubrey Layne will deliver a new revenue forecast when the session begins, Knight said.
Also frozen — $10 million to improve Nimmo Parkway.
Knight said the road badly needs to be redone since it floods, sometimes blocking access to Sandbridge. Knight said he will ask again for money to be allotted to that project, but he doesn’t know if he will be successful.
In March, Bob Matthias, Virginia Beach’s lobbyist, said that if the state gave the city $10 million for the road project then the city could free up $10 million to put toward renovating Building 2.
Dyer also urged the General Assembly in his letter to restore $300 million in funding for schools across the state, which was also deallocated during the veto session. Dyer said Virginia Beach would spend its extra school money on 2% salary increases for teachers.
“We hope that the Delegation can work with the rest of the General Assembly to have funding for the salary increases reinstated into the budget to support our educators,” Dyer wrote.
Knight said he didn’t think that request would be granted either.
Alissa Skelton, 757-222-5155, alissa.skelton@pilotonline.com.
