VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — The use of Virginia Beach school buses to transport festival-goers is a matter that's still up in the air. The city council is all for it, but school board members do have some concerns about the issue.
Thousands of people are expected to flood Virginia Beach for Pharrell’s "Something in the Water" festival.
The big question on everyone’s mind: How are all those people going to get around?
“I don’t see a problem with it," said Virginia Beach resident Bill Bort. "Hopefully they’ve got enough buses to take care of all these people because we’ve got a bunch of people coming in.”
The Virginia Beach city council approved the use of 70 buses to drive festival attendees from parking lots to the Oceanfront stage.
The school board is meeting Tuesday night to discuss it.
“This is pretty unprecedented, using our school buses for an event like this,” said Virginia Beach School Board member Victoria Manning.
“The first student pick up is around 5:30 in the morning, Monday morning. So we need to make sure our school buses are ready to go, are clean, that our drivers have plenty of rest.”
She said she's "really excited" about the event, but board members have questions about how the buses would be used.
“I really hope that this turns out to be a great event where it really puts our city on the map in a positive way. So I am a huge supporter of the event," she said. "I just want to make sure that, as a school board member, our school board resources are not negatively impacted.”
She said she's unsure if a decision on the buses would happen Tuesday night at the end of the meeting.
City Council member Aaron Rouse said he plans to stop by the meeting.
He noted hundreds of school bus drivers have volunteered to drive.
“Not only do we have over 70 bus drivers ready to volunteer for this weekend but there’s a list of over 400 volunteers,” he said.
“The idea is always to alleviate a lot of the traffic concerns – not only for our local residents but for our visitors coming here and we want to make sure we utilize every possible asset that we can.”
Rouse said festival organizers will cover costs associated with using school buses.
“Using these school buses is not a tax burden towards our residents," he said. "This is something that the festival themselves will fully reimburse the city for.”