Virginia Beach Ranks #25 Behind Far More Liberal Cities

Dear Mayor, Councilmembers, City Manager, and City Staff:

We want Virginia Beach to be the City of Yes and have positivity but financially other Cities appear to do so much better?

Please look at the City of Irvine and see what & how they consistently do to have excellent financial management? Irvine has very modest unfunded pension liabilities & retire health care benefits. Virginia Beach has about $1.234 Billion in unfunded liabilities & retiree benefits.

Irvine also has modest “Other liabilities” that appear to be very financially sound when compared to Virginia Beach debt that is around 1.2 Billion. (yearly VB debt service is around $170 million?)

https://www.cityofirvine.org/economic-development/no-1-fiscal-strength-2019

The City of Irvine was reviewed using five factors:

“The ratio of a city’s general fund balance to its expenditures
“The ratio of its long-term obligations to total government-wide revenues
“The ratio of actuarially determined pension contributions to total government-wide revenues
“Change in local unemployment rate
“Change in property values.”

Most noticeable is the modest amount of liabilities/ debt (and little debt service) for the City of Irvine

Virginia Beach Debt chart provided in Finance presentation.

What can Virginia Beach pro-actively do to reduce debt spending and learn from the City of Irvine?

Virginia Beach needs to fund essential core services and improve finances. Fixing flooding seems to be getting cuts while this was identified by Citizens and by the DoD/ Military to be essential so they could get to the bases? Defense appears to be the biggest economic force/ employer in Virginia Beach.

Is it time to furlough staff, like Norfolk has done as they cut the Norfolk budget by multi-millions and over 4.4 percent?

https://www.pilotonline.com/government/local/vp-nw-norfolk-budget-2021-coronavirus-20200421-gthpq67fhfbsnmcf2lqottz7wy-story.html