VIRGINIA BEACH, Va.— As the City of Virginia Beach remembers the deadly Virginia Beach mass shooting that took the lives of 12 people and injured four others one year ago, several city services offered by the departments that were housed in Building 2 of the Virginia Beach Municipal Center will be unavailable for all or part of Friday.
Mission-essential and mission-critical functions will continue under modified operations.
You can find a list of modified operations below:
Virginia Beach Public Utilities
- Customer service functions will be closed to the public on Friday, May 29.
- Routine service turn-on or turn-offs on May 29 will be suspended. Customers needing services turned on or off from May 29 to May 31 should submit all service requests prior to May 29.
- On May 29, customer service agents will only handle routine online inquiries, which can be submitted online here.
- Customers should call 311 for water and sewer emergencies during this time.
- Appointments for payment of line fees will not be scheduled for this day.
Virginia Beach Public Works
- Offices will close at 2 p.m. on Friday, May 29, except for Public Works Waste Management, which will provide its usual services, including recycling and trash collection, until daily routes are completed.
- The Virginia Beach Landfill & Resource Recovery Center will remain open during its normal operating hours.
- Public Works construction projects, with Public Works inspectors, will also continue as usual.
Planning and Community Development
- Requests for inspections should be made on Thursday, May 28 or on Monday, June 1.
- Due to limited staffing, please allow for delayed response until Monday, June 1.
Information Technology
- Staff will be on standby to address any network, systems and application issues.
The city has also provided a number of ways to commemorate the one-year mark of a day that changed our lives and our community forever:
Friday, May 29
- Wear blue, the color of remembrance.
- Place Forget-Me-Not display in your window for the weekend.
- Add the Forget-Me-Not social media frame to your Facebook profile photo for the weekend.
- Wherever you are on Friday, May 29 at 4:06 p.m., observe a moment of silence.
Friday, May 29 through Sunday, May 31
- Visit the “Lighting the Path: Together We Remember Tribute” installation at Building 2 and at Mount Trashmore Park (side of the hill that faces 264).
Sunday, May 31
- Online remembrance ceremony - At 4:06 p.m., the city will release an online remembrance ceremony that will be a tribute to the victims, their families, friends and colleagues at loveforvb.com. It will also play on VBTV (Cox channel 48 & Verizon channel 45) and YouTube.
- Plant Forget-Me-Not Flowers – If you have a green thumb, plant some Forget-Me-Nots. They’re a perennial and will bloom year after year. In general, the meaning behind this flower is remembrance and love. The city adapted it, creating our own version that includes elements representing the 17 victims and the community that surrounds them.
- Window Displays – You can show your support and honor the memories of those we lost by downloading a finished version of our Forget-Me-Not flower design or get the therapeutic benefits from coloring and creating art by downloading one of the blank coloring sheets. Just download the Forget-Me-Not symbol of your choice and place it in your window or somewhere it is visible to those passing by. The coloring sheets can be found here (finished design), here (simple) and here (advanced).
- Leave your porch light on blue or white in remembrance.
- Social Media Frame – The city created Forget-Me-Not frames you can add to your Facebook profile picture. Go to Facebook's page for profile picture frames. Search for “Love For VB.” Choose the frame you want to use from the results. Click "Use as Profile Picture," or use this link or this link to go directly to the frame.
The VB Strong Center has additional programming for the weekend. Visit their calendar of events.
Click here for full coverage of the Virginia Beach mass shooting.
