Virginia Beach City Council moves meetings to Convention Center due to pandemic

Virginia Beach — The Health Department has recommended that the City Council and Planning Commission no longer hold public meetings at City Hall for the foreseeable future due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Suite 5 at the Virginia Beach Convention Center will be the new meeting place so everyone will have enough room to space out, the city announced on Thursday. The change comes a few days after Councilman John Moss announced he tested positive for COVID-19. The next scheduled council meeting will be on Tuesday.

The council and commission have already held several meetings at the Convention Center due to the pandemic, but have occasionally returned to council chambers for meetings that aren’t expecting large crowds. The Convention Center can accommodate up to 40 audience members and has plenty of room for people to wait outside if it reaches capacity.

Julie Hill, a spokeswoman for the city, said the meeting room in City Hall has an HVAC system that does not meet the expectations set forth by the Centers for Disease Control for air movement, cleaning and re-circulation. Additionally, the space is too small, making it difficult to follow the 6-foot physical distancing recommendation to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

“Most of the meetings we have had over the last two months have been at the convention center, so while we will be in a different room, this solution allows us to exercise greater precautions than we are able to attain in the meeting chamber in City Hall,” City Manager Patrick Duhaney said in a statement.

Duhaney urged residents to only attend meetings if absolutely necessary. The city has allowed residents to participate remotely, including allowing speakers to comment during the meeting from home, but sometimes there are technical difficulties. The meeting are shown live on VBTV, VBGov.com and Facebook.

Hill asked residents to disregard ads for City Council and Planning Commission meetings placed in The Beacon, a Virginian-Pilot publication, that said Tuesdays meeting would be held at City Hall. She said the city planned to re-advertise in The Pilot on Sunday "to call people’s attention to the move to the Convention Center.”

Alissa Skelton, 757-995-9043, alissa.skelton@pilotonline.com.