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Archive for August, 2007

Boondoggle on a Fast Track

Thursday, August 30th, 2007

Emphasis mine:

Arts-center agreement up for vote Sept. 10
City set to discuss public-private approach on $65 million deal
Thursday, Aug 30, 2007
By WILL JONES
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER

Richmond City Council will vote Sept. 10 on a proposed public-private agreement to build an arts center in downtown Richmond.

City Councilwoman Ellen F. Robertson kept the review of two ordinances related to the project on the fast-track yesterday by calling a special meeting of her finance committee for 5 p.m. Wednesday.

City administration officials had asked the full council to vote on the ordinances Sept. 10, bypassing the committee’s next regular meeting Sept. 20.

Chief Financial Officer Harry E. Black has said the expedited review is necessary so a construction contract for the $65 million Richmond CenterStage project can be signed before prices increase.

Robertson and City Councilman Bruce W. Tyler met with Mayor L. Douglas Wilder on Friday to discuss the agreement. It would allow the arts center to be developed and managed by Richmond Performing Arts Center LLLP through 40-year leases with the city, which would own the Carpenter Center, and the Virginia Performing Arts Foundation, which would own the rest of the complex. The center is scheduled to open in fall 2009.

In a follow-up letter Tuesday, Wilder told Robertson he’s glad she’s asking questions but expressed bewilderment that she hasn’t stayed abreast of the project. Wilder noted that City Council appointed Robertson and City Council President William J. Pantele to the board of the arts foundation in 2005.

“Given what should have been your access to detailed information through your ties on the performing arts board, I expected you to have a firmer grip of the Carpenter Center project and what is being proposed,” Wilder said.

Robertson did not return two messages yesterday but said last week that she hasn’t attended foundation board meetings for about a year because they conflict with a class she’s taking.

Pantele called Wilder’s scolding disingenuous. He said Wilder knows the details of the agreement were hammered out not by the arts foundation, but by administration officials and business leaders tapped by Wilder since the project was scaled back last year.

Pantele said council members are right to ask questions about whether the city would be exposed in the event of construction or operating cost overruns.

“Those are new provisions that he has apparently negotiated on his own,” Pantele said of Wilder.

City spokesman Linwood Norman would not respond and said Wilder was unavailable for comment.

In his letter, Wilder also suggested that he and the council hold joint meetings together to answer questions of each other and the public on a variety of issues.

Pantele supports the idea. “It’s a good idea to have some kind of informal discussion.

Yes, wouldn’t that be a good idea — to answer questions about how city government can do “business” like this. And, gosh, isn’t it nice of them to start AFTER this arts center deal goes down.

Incidentially, Councilman Pantele is being more than a bit disingenuous himself. As the Richmond Times-Dispatch has previously revealed — and strangely does not want to reiterate for readers here — the final report governing this shameful scheme was written by none other than J. Robert Mooney of the Virginia Performing Arts Foundation. Anyone who doesn’t know by now that VAPAF, RPAC and the Performing Arts Committee are interchangable simply hasn’t been paying attention.

Mr. Wilder is so proud of this deal that he has now refused to comment on it in three successive news articles. No wonder. As Style Weekly reported last week, the Mayor’s puzzling 11th hour support of this VAPAF-written tax giveaway hinges on a quid pro quo deal made with the Foundation’s well-heeled overseers. It has nothing to do with responsible public policy — and everything to do with keeping the big boys happy.

The rest of us — the people being taxed to pay for all these champagne wishes and caviar dreams — well, if we’re lucky, we might get to have our questions answered in an “informal discussion.” Lucky us.

Anyone out there still confident that we don’t have a boondoggle here — a 40-year boondoggle? If so, I have some swamp land near the Berry Burk building you might be interested in.

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Richmond’s War on Nightlife (Continued)

Wednesday, August 29th, 2007

Nightlife… what war on nightlife?

This week’s Style Weekly article on R-Town’s new Toad’s Place — which has had to jump through numerous silly hoops to obtain an alcohol license — is only the latest example of how the Richmond branch of the Virginia ABC board unfairly targets and hinders area music clubs, and yet another strong argument for reforming Virginia’s antiquated, Prohibition-era alcohol laws mandating food sales.

We’ve complained many times to numerous public officials about the heavy-booted foot-dragging and Draconian tactics of the Richmond ABC. The reaction we always get is: “Huh?”

Let’s hope these folks read this piece, written by Brandon Reynolds, so they can understand the problem.

An excerpt:

[Toad's] license, issued just in time for an Aug. 26 show with George Thorogood, patron saint of drinkers, is a completion of sorts for Jeff Sadler, long-suffering general manager, who said in a Style story in September 2005, “We’re still feasible for a Thanksgiving opening. But it’s just as likely to be around Christmas. We are still working on the scope of the project, trying to decide just how extravagant we want to get.” So it’s been a long couple of years for him.

But they did end up getting pretty extravagant, with what Sadler has called the best sound system in Virginia, plus the cameras and digital screens, the lights, the restaurant.

“It’s a tough process. I think the key here is that it really is rather an arcane process,” Sadler says before heading out to pick up his newly minted license. “I think we got additional scrutiny because of our size and because we’re doing things a little differently.”

In the ABC report, Sadler says that construction on the restaurant “should be completed” Aug. 27. But he’s learned to speak cautiously about timetables. The city will inspect it when workers lay down their drills, approve it for occupancy, and after that, with any luck, there will be no duck without a row.

“I’m not a developer, I’m not an attorney, I’m not a contractor,” Sadler says. So he navigates the waters.

“I have always done everything they’ve asked me to do,” he explains of the delays. Sadler says the ABC had presented a few more obstacles than just waiting patiently for construction to be complete. But with the Aug. 24 announcement, the two main objections were resolved. One objection was over the restaurant.

The other, though, was an issue that cropped up after a July 7 benefit. There was a one-night banquet license to serve alcohol, and when an investigator from the ABC came for an inspection July 23 (at Sadler’s invitation, he says), she noted the leftover beer and wine and filed a complaint. Sadler acknowledges that he is at fault for not getting the troublemaking alcohol out, but still felt the ABC was dragging its heels to get this resolved.

“Given a half an hour, I could name 50 places [that] are less legitimate than we are,” Sadler said before the hearing. If it sounds as though he thought ABC was picking on him, maybe he’s justified. He estimates that attendance is down 10 percent to 20 percent from the lack of alcohol sales.

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Dirty and Ugly

Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

�I have no doubt it�s going to get done,� says another person close to the project. �But it�s going to get pretty dirty and pretty ugly.�

� “Pomp & Circumstances: The Untold Story of Richmond’s Arts Center,” Style Weekly, June 2005.

And how.

Last week’s RTD articles on the ever-evolving CenterStage boondoggle confirmed what readers of local blogs have already learned and/or figured out by now: Things have now officially gotten “dirty and ugly.”

As we see:

- The Virginia Performing Arts Foundation has failed to include annual operating expenses in its budget � the rich, well-heeled power brokers behind the Foundation would prefer to have taxpayers foot the bill, thanks.

- Construction bids have come in $2.4 million higher than anticipated…. and guess who will pay for that? (No one knows or is willing to say).

- The Foundation only has “plans” to include an artists endowment � oh, did we mention that this was about the arts? � and admits that their project to “save downtown” will operate at a $1 million per year deficit.

- VAPAF bypassed city council authority by demolishing the interior of the Carpenter Center before an agreement with the city was finalized� never mind those pesky PPEA regulations.

Best of all is the civic stammering and excuse-making contained in last Tuesday’s jaw-dropping episode of “Public-Private Partnerships Gone Wild,” written by RTD staffer Will Jones. It’s a report that is littered with whopper quotes that will live in infamy [Bolded for emphasis]:

Arts-center plan requests operating support
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2007

Richmond taxpayers might do more than help build the downtown arts center.

They also might pay to keep the lights on and bathrooms clean.

The city would contribute up to $500,000 a year to operate the Richmond CenterStage complex and the Landmark Theater under terms of a proposed agreement between the city and backers of the arts center. The proposal, submitted to the Richmond City Council, comes despite earlier assertions that expected operating deficits would be covered by a private endowment.

Chief Financial Officer Harry E. Black said the deal would be good for the city because with no participation from the Virginia Performing Arts Foundation, taxpayers are already spending about $770,000 annually to operate the city-owned Landmark Theater.

“That’s just a bare minimum, to just keep the doors open,” Black said.

Please remember that when Mr. Black speaks of keeping the Landmark doors open, he is talking about entrusting it to a group that squandered the Carpenter Center endowment and left it closed for two years. And he is not joking.

Let’s move on…

Critics complain the proposed deal would open city coffers in a way never intended.

“It’s another number out of the blue,” said Paul Goldman, a former policy adviser to Mayor L. Douglas Wilder and a longtime critic of the arts-center project. “I think anybody needs a lot more answers before they see it’s transparent.”

City Councilwoman Ellen F. Robertson, who leads the council’s finance committee, said she was surprised by the offer of operating support and found no justification in documents submitted last week by Wilder’s administration.

“There are just a lot of . . . questions that I’m sure we’ll clear up,” she said.

Please remember that the positive-thinking Ellen Robertson is not only a city councilwoman who is ready to vote on this controversial measure, she is also one of two councilmembers who is also a sitting board member of…

The Virginia Performing Arts Foundation!!

So, in a nutshell, Ms. Robertson is quite sure that the questions she will be asking of herself will be cleared up. And she seems to have no problem with obvious conflict-of-interest issues that would, ah, impede her intense scrutiny of herself.

Ready to take that bath yet, Richmond?

Bring a brillo pad and some lye soap along as we continue. It gets worse:

Black said the city would be shortsighted to invest $25 million in the $65 million arts center only to skimp on operations and maintenance.

He said the proposed agreement represents “give and take” with the Virginia Performing Arts Foundation. “This is happening because everyone involved wants it to happen and are doing everything they can to make it happen.”

The arts foundation is working to raise $10 million initially for an operating endowment, Executive Director Linda Dalch Jones said. So far, she said, $5 million to $6 million has been earmarked for the fund.

Officials have not disclosed the projected operating costs and revenues for the center since plans were scaled back last year. Jones said yesterday that she expects an annual deficit of about $1 million.

Black said the proposed agreement would commit city funds up to $500,000 only as they are matched by the arts foundation. He said taxpayers could expect to recoup the money through admission taxes and other taxes generated by the arts center.

The idea for operating support from the city came from the final report of Wilder’s arts committee, said J. Robert Mooney, vice chairman of the arts foundation.

Whoa! Hold on just a minute. As Save Richmond � and even the Times-Dispatch � has reported, the writer of the performing arts committee’s final report was none other than…

J. Robert Mooney, vice chairman of the arts foundation!!

Ugh!

No use putting lipstick and mascara on it � this is sleaze that knows no bounds.

We close with the councilwoman/VAPAF board member who is “sure” that everything will be all right:

Robertson said her initial review of the agreement reinforces the need for regular council committee review. The city administration has asked to bypass that process so construction bids can be finalized. Work to prepare the Carpenter Center for expansion and renovation has begun. Robertson said that shows council’s approval has been anticipated.

“It’s not the way we should go about doing business.”

Not so, Ms. Robertson. When you factor in the behind-the-scenes backroom “deal” that led to this farce, it’s precisely the way that Richmond has done business over the years. And that’s the problem. Face it: If this kind of deal were happening in some other town, with someone else’s tax dollars, we’d be horrified. Here, we just shrug it off and say, “that’s Richmond.”

But don’t turn away, take a good hard look. This is what dirty and ugly look like. And you’re paying for it.

Posted in our social betters, politricks, sheer terror, shell game, something smells funny in here, the free press | No Comments »

Let’s Do The Time Warp Again!

Friday, August 17th, 2007

Reading today’s RTD article on last night’s CenterStage meeting in Council chambers made me think of time travel, and the sci-fi paperbacks of Philip K. Dick.

Talk about androids dreaming of electric sheep. I wonder: When the “leaders” who voted for the Sixth Street Marketplace look back on the fine work they did back in the mid-’80’s, do you think their main regret is: “Gee, we should’ve passed that excellent legislation ten days earlier”?

This is Richmond, so they probably do. Excerpts below. Emphasis sadly mine:

Richmond Mayor L. Douglas Wilder and the Virginia Performing Arts Foundation have outlined their deal to build an arts center in downtown.

But City Council isn’t ready to bless the proposed agreement, introduced yesterday by the administration.

“This is the first time we’ve seen anything,” said 6th District Councilwoman Ellen F. Robertson, holding copies of two ordinances submitted to council in a meeting requested by the mayor.

The ordinances would transfer ownership of the Carpenter Center from the foundation to the city and allow Chief Financial Officer Harry E. Black to carry out the agreement in his capacity as deputy chief administrative officer.

In addition, the city would contribute up to $25 million toward the $65 million project, as well as provide up to $500,000 annually for operations as long as an equal amount is provided by the foundation.

The arts center, called Richmond CenterStage, is scheduled to open in fall of 2009.

Under the proposed agreement, the facility would be developed and managed by Richmond Performing Arts Center LLLP through 40-year leases with the city and arts foundation. The foundation would be owner of Dorothy Pauley Square, a complex of several venues just east of the Carpenter Center.

The framework for the deal, which also includes management of the city-owned Landmark Theater, was outlined this year by a committee appointed by Wilder after a more-ambitious plan for the arts center failed.

The ordinances are scheduled for a hearing by the council’s Finance Committee, led by Robertson, on Sept. 20. However, the administration has asked council to waive the committee review and act on both ordinances Sept. 10.

“It’s to accelerate the overall construction schedule,” Black said after yesterday’s meeting.

Demolition has begun and is expected to last up to five months. However, Black said he wants quick action so Richmond Performing Arts Center can execute a contract with Gilbane Building Co., the project’s construction management firm. He said that’s necessary to avoid changes in the volatile construction market.

Black said he was unable last night to discuss construction bids and said it’s unclear how much CenterStage and the Landmark will cost annually to operate.

It’s nice of the RTD to finally report on CenterStage’s lack of an operating budget � something Save Richmond readers learned nearly two months ago (“When You Need to Know Stuff… Read a Blog”TM). But, really, who cares about such things as “time,” “space” and “operating endowments” when you live in a mind-bending, circular time warping, Groundhog Day-ish Black Hole like Richmond?

As you can see, it’s 2003 all over again. An arts center is being proposed for downtown Richmond. It is not being run by performing arts professionals. It is being run by a connected group of mostly white downtown property owners. The public-private venture is being subsidized through millions in current, and future, taxpayer dollars. Private support for the project has been lacking, and statements about finances and programming have been less than forthcoming. Despite sponsoring no public meeting about the project, or demanding a single independent feasibility study, Richmond’s mayor is determined to push legislation through at any cost, while city council pays lip service to holding “feet to the fire” by promising to carefully “look over” the project. The organizers, meanwhile, say “Relax, it’s all taken care of. And it’s for the children.”

Look for a brand new “hole in the ground,” coming soon to a downtown near you. After that, city residents can go to the polls to directly elect Richmond’s mayor so they can get special patronage and wasteful spending and quid pro quo deals out of City Hall forever. Oh… wait… what year is this, again?

Leave it to Paul Goldman (over at his new NBC-12 blog) to jolt us back into the Bizarro World of today and tell us how things are really different � and more complicated � now. Excerpts below, with emphasis mine:

Take out your check book Richmond, that promise about the Arts Center has just been broken: and it will cost you millions.

City Financial Chief Harry Black, in a reversal of previous promises over the last 4 years from city officials, wants the City Council to agree to a more generous deal on the proposed Downtown Arts Center than all the previous others that were criticized as too costly to taxpayers! Despite supposedly iron-clad promises to the contrary from city officials and Arts Center backers, suddenly city taxpayers are being asked to put up general fund and general tax dollars for the OPERATIONAL EXPENSES of the Arts Center. Arts Center backers, Mayors, Council members, and editorial supporters had made it clear they had no intention of asking taxpayers to fund the OPERATIONAL SIDE.

When I was reviewing the finances of the original downtown center and stopping the waste of millions of taxpayer dollars on a project that was so poorly conceived that it had grown to over 100 million - and counting - I often asked: How are you going to cover the operation expenses, since it seems to me your own numbers show a lot of red ink as far as the eye could see?

Don’t worry, I was told. So was the Mayor. No public monies will be needed to run it, just to build it. I was skeptical. Now everyone knows why.

But this time, it is our city government that is breaking the promise. Moreover, it should be clear that City Council President Bill Pantele and City Councilwoman Ellen Robertson need to refrain from voting on the measure or trying to influence their colleagues due to their involvements with the Arts Foundation.

Right now, Mr. Black’s proposal has been sent to Mrs. Robertson’s committee for review. Anyone who has been at all critical of Vice-President Cheney’s involvement with contracts benefiting his former company needs to be consistent here. This is not a knock on Bill or Ellen. But given the nature of this proposal, they should see that any involvement they may have in approving it will only help form a cloud over this whole matter, as the Mayor himself has pointed out at times.

Out-of-the-blue, or should I say because of the hidden red ink that has always been kept from the public, Mr. Black is proposing something the Mayor has never previously supported: using taxpayer money, that would otherwise go, for example, to property-tax relief, fixing neighborhood streets or sidewalks, to fund the operational deficit of this project.

That’s right: The public now knows that the whole project, despite promises to the contrary, is not seen as being able to cover it’s own expenses. It will run a deficit.

We need an Arts Center, and I pleased Mr. Black supports my plan, part of my City of the Future proposal, that finally gets the City this type of arts venue at a saving of tens of millions.

But the deal now proposed puts the city on the hook for many more millions than anyone has ever previously revealed: and this time, the money is not for construction costs. This is in direct contradiction to what has been promised all these years.

Why are the working families of Richmond treated with such disrespect? Why can’t the people get the straight story? Whether fair or not, this is the kind of action that will get a lot of people in Richmond comparing this to the same kind of thinking that says: “Hell with the people, we are going to take away their right to elect the School Board because they aren’t smart enough to choose the right people.”

Is it really going to help Richmond, and indeed make the Arts Center the potentially uplifting entity it can and should be, if it can only get built by years of conning the average citizen?

… what happens if the Arts Center misses its promises - again - and it needs another $500,000 to keep the doors open?

You know the answer: You will be paying the debt.

Posted in moments of civic brilliance, number-crunching, our social betters, politricks, sheer terror, shell game, something smells funny in here | No Comments »

How We Do Things Around Here

Thursday, August 16th, 2007

Well, it looks like there’s a special meeting tonight at 6PM at council chambers to rush the CenterStage project through.

But, naturally, you and I are not supposed to know about it.

I’m told, by the City Clerk’s office, that a media advisory was issued yesterday. Of course, I can’t find this advisory anywhere on the city’s website, including the section that features press releases. In any case, that is plenty of time to alert citizens about the public discussion of a controversial � some might even say fraudulent � undertaking involving the illegal demolition of our most historic city venue and the final resting place of millions in tax dollars.

If one clicks on the online agenda for the meeting, the file is empty (as of 2:15PM). Funny: All the rest of the agenda summaries on the page seem to work.

I’m now told that selected city councilpeople are either failing to call their constituents back who leave messages asking about the meeting � or know nothing about the substance of the meeting themselves.

Gee, you think there might be a stacked deck here?

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Accountability: It’s For Other People

Tuesday, August 14th, 2007

Come back Gwen Hedgepeth, Sa’ad El-Amin and Calvin Jamison — all is forgiven.

In its latest issue, on the stands tomorrow, Style Weekly shines a much-needed spotlight on “The Gang of 26″ and their notorious proposal that suggests that the only way to fix Richmond’s failing school system is to disenfranchise city voters.

Seems there may be a bit of a backroom deal going on — and longtime Save Richmond readers will not be surprised to learn that a certain real estate deal masquerading as an arts project is front and center in the mix.

A key excerpt [emphasis mine]:

[Tichi] Pinkney-Eppes [President of the Richmond Council of PTAs] goes further in criticizing the letter-writers, suggesting either they are either badly misinformed about where Richmond Public Schools problems lie or they might have other motives.

“What is significantly going to change if we have an elected school board or an appointed school board?” she asks, pointing to politics as the only answer.

Pinkney-Eppes says the letter’s proposed solution hands over control of a newly constituted appointed school board to the mayor.

One City Council insider who declined to be identified says there’s little coincidence that many letter-signers are closely connected to the Richmond CenterStage project.

Among them is Thomas Farrell II, chairman, president and CEO of Dominion Resources, who also chairs RPAC Inc., the nonprofit overseeing the CenterStage project. Farrell is cited by various other signers as having approached them about adding their names to the letter. Farrell, who is traveling abroad, was unavailable for comment.

“Is there quid pro quo there?” asks the anonymous City Council official, suggesting Wilder is getting support he’d like from the business leaders in exchange for greasing the wheels of the CenterStage project.

On Monday, council members received the letter, and on Friday, the insider says, “Wilder asked for council to hold special hearings to approve the CenterStage agreement.”

Wilder’s former chief policy adviser, Paul Goldman, also asked the question: “Is this quid pro quo? The arts center in exchange for the School Board?”

Can you think of any other reason why the normally-tough-talking L. Douglas Wilder would allow the Virginia Performing Arts Foundation to illegally demolish the Carpenter Center, and would look the other way while Tom Farrell shields the amount of his publicly-funded project’s construction bids from taxpayers?

Either way, I suggest that the slogan for the Mayor’s re-election campaign be as follows: “Accountability: It’s for other people.”

Posted in come the revolution..., our social betters, politricks, sheer terror, shell game, something smells funny in here, the free press, the inexplicably employed | No Comments »

Philip Morris Smokeless Tobacco High School?

Tuesday, August 7th, 2007

How was your wake up call this morning, Richmond?

“Whap!”

That was the sound of parents and taxpayers getting bitchslapped into consciousness by the Mayor and by the city’s most prominent business leaders.

You know the leaders I’m referring to� the same crowd who told you more than two years ago that directly electing Richmond’s mayor would help to bring about real leadership and direct citizen input in River City… and also treat warts, regrow hair on bald spots and ward off hangovers.

But hold on � there are limits to freedom (to quote another business-friendly leader currently grasping for a positive legacy). It seems that while directly electing our mayor was a slam dunk for Democracy � so the hype went � Richmond’s “business community” doesn’t think city voters are, ah, sophisticated enough to choose who gets to represent them on the Richmond School Board. A connected cabal of corporate heavyweights would, instead, like the power to choose, appoint and otherwise install the board’s representatives themselves (with a little help from their friends at City Hall). The fact that they don’t have to tangle with Doug Wilder to accomplish this is icing on the cake.

Read the above again because you may have missed the utter inanity � the sheer bald-faced audacity � of this proposal. No wonder they waited until after Oliver Hill (the city’s first elected black city councilman) was dead before they announced it � he would have been among the first to see this for what it truly is.

From today’s Times-Dispatch:

More than two dozen of Richmond’s most powerful business and civic leaders want to abolish the election of the city’s School Board.

In a letter sent to Mayor L. Douglas Wilder and the Richmond City Council, the city’s business community called for action in next year’s General Assembly session to amend the city’s charter so School Board members would once again be appointed from each council district.

The business leaders recommend creating a nominating committee, appointed by the council with the mayor’s recommendation, to screen potential candidates for each of the city’s nine council districts.

The letter is signed by 26 business leaders, including several longtime allies of Wilder. It calls the state of Richmond’s public schools “an emergency situation that must be dealt with immediately and with bold action.”

“We have no quarrel with the members of the School Board who have done their best — rather we believe a fundamental flaw exists in the governance structure, which cannot be solved without a new approach to leadership and accountability for the success of the schools,” the letter states.

The letter landed like a bomb at City Hall yesterday, where the mayor hailed it and members of the School Board challenged the need for change.

“The next step is for the people of the city of Richmond to determine what kind of school system they want and what kind of representation they want,” Wilder said in an interview.

Evette L. Wilson, who was elected last year to represent the 9th District on the board, said the public made that decision when it began electing the board in 1994. “I’m very passionate about elected school boards. . . . I stood in front of many grocery stores with my kids to get signatures on petitions,” Wilson said.

“In my opinion if we go back to the appointed School Board, then you cannot guarantee the citizens the right to hold the School Board members accountable for any decisions they make.”

Gee, you think?

As the article continues, we learn that Bill “Did I Tell You How Much I Want to Be Mayor?” Pantele says it’s a really spiffy idea and worthy of study (gee, I wonder what he would think of an appointed city council?). And School board Chairman George Braxton and Vice-Chairman Lisa Dawson try to pretend that they aren’t two of the main reasons why Richmond’s school board is in such a state of crisis that some might want to dissolve it. All in all, it is a pathetic and strangely dispassionate response from elected leaders to what is, essentially, a takeover bid to strip the voting rights of ordinary Richmond taxpayers � and parents.

What’s truly sad is that those in charge of the current Schools Administration have left the Richmond school system in such dire straits that this kind of Draconian measure would even be considered seriously, much less officially proposed.

But anyone who thinks an appointed board of Richmond-area corporate figureheads would bring us closer to sound fiscal management, a corrupion-free, waste-free philosophy and anything close to participatory democracy simply hasn’t been paying attention.

As we’ve noted here (over and over) on this site, the mayor and these same members of the “business community” have been less than stellar when it comes to soliciting, and incorporating, civic participation for the area boards they’ve convened over the past two years. They’ve held “public” meetings that were never advertised or were shielded from the eyes of taxpayers…. they’ve eschewed people with expertise because they weren’t a part of the club or have dissenting opinions to offer… they’ve spearheaded large projects, unaccountable to the public, that have cost the city millions through waste and inefficiency… they’ve refused to either live up to the deals cut with the city or to reveal the full details of how millions in public funding will be used for those deals…. and they’ve said one thing when it comes to their relations with the community, while doing another.

Gosh, that sounds an awful lot like our current school board, doesn’t it? Tell me again why this is a good idea.

While you are answering that question, try these:

How many of these “business leaders” have children in Richmond public schools?

How many have experience in schools administration? How many have attended a school board meeting in the past, oh, six months?

How many of these folks even live in the city of Richmond?

Lastly, does this look like a representative group of everyday Richmonders to you? Or does it look like a list of the same corporate figureheads and retirees that sit on every other appointed board around here?

Richard Cullen, chairman, McGuireWoods LLP
Eugene P. Trani, president, Virginia Commonwealth University; president
C.T. Hill, chairman, president and CEO, SunTrust Bank, Mid-Atlantic
William H. Goodwin Jr., president, CCA Industries Inc.
John A. Luke Jr., chairman and CEO, MeadWestvaco
Robert J. Grey Jr., partner, Hunton & Williams
Michael D. Fraizer, chairman, president and CEO, Genworth Financial
James E. Ukrop, chairman, First Market Bank
Thomas E. Goode, Premier Executive Banking and Richmond market president, Bank of America
Thurston R. Moore, chairman, Hunton & Williams
Robert C. Sledd, chairman, Performance Food Group Co.
Julious P. Smith Jr., chairman and CEO, Williams Mullen
G. Gilmer Minor III, chairman, Owens & Minor Inc.
Jon C. King, president and CEO, Exclusive Staffing
Anthony F. Markel, president and COO, Markel Corp.
Robert D. Seabolt, administrative partner, TroutmanSanders LLP
Kenneth S. Johnson, president and CEO, Johnson Inc.
Clarence L. Townes Jr., retired executive
Patrick W. Farrell, president, HCA-Richmond Health System
Robert W. Woltz Jr., president-Virginia, Verizon Communications
Allison P. Weinstein, president and COO, Weinstein Properties
John B. Adams Jr., chairman and CEO, The Martin Agency Inc.
Peter J. Bernard, chief executive officer, Bon Secours Richmond Health System
Theodore L. Chandler Jr., chairman and CEO, LandAmerica Financial Group Inc.
Thomas F. Farrell, II, chairman and CEO, Dominion
Mike Szymanczyk, chairman and CEO, Philip Morris USA

I’m hardly a fan of the Richmond School Board � in fact, I’ve called for certain members of the board to be impeached, and stand by that recommendation � but that doesn’t mean that I’m ready to sign onto a plan that is nothing but public education as prescribed by Ukrop’s Supermarkets, Dominion Resources and McGuire-Woods LLP. This is, simply put, a takeover bid � an attempted coup by those on the Style Weekly Power List who have seen their own influence within the city slightly diminished and don’t like it one bit (best example to show: 300 people, and not 20, provided input into the updated downtown plan � a positive development by any sane community standard, but a threatening end to business-as-usual for a select few).

Years ago, Save Richmond liked to joke around about how one small group of unelected town fathers pulled all of the puppet strings around here. But if this regressive and elitist notion from the self-proclaimed “business community” advances any farther than light dinner conversation at the country club or Bill Pantele’s campaign headquarters, the idea of a “Philip Morris Smokeless Tobacco High School” won’t be a joke anymore. At least not the kind of joke anyone would feel like laughing about.

[UPDATE: In my haste to post the above, I neglected to include a very important thought: These guys have every right to speak out � as one voice or many � on important civic matters. And if the threat of this proposal causes us all to seriously look at what is happening (or not happening, as the case may be) with our elected school board, good on them! But if it's all the same to the "business community," I'd like to reserve the right to vote out my local school board representative myself. It's a little something called Democracy, and we need more of it around here, not less.]

Posted in come the revolution..., our social betters, politricks, sheer terror | No Comments »

Priorities?

Saturday, August 4th, 2007

This is one letter worth reproducing in its entirety… but the bolded emphasis is all mine:

Letter from the Director:
Downtown Master Plan � We Were There!

As founder and director of Curated Culture, and an almost 20 year resident of the City, I attended the recent Downtown Master Planning sessions, hoping to give voice to our creative community and to smart development of Downtown. I’ve set through some similiar types of sessions, and they all seem to kinda fizzle out after you leave the board room, so I can’t deny that I was skeptical. But I tried to stay hopeful, and I think it paid off, as the sessions were extremely interesting and the outcomes positive.

Plant Zero was packed on Friday night, July 20 when the “charette” process kicked off with a “Planning 101″ orientation for us novice planners. This gave way to an all-day hands-on experience on Saturday, July 21 where we put our ideas and brainstorming power to paper. Thinking about “what Richmond could be” was pretty exciting, especially when you get to rebuild without thought to money or politics and you have creative minds around you. What was truly inspiring was not only seeing around 175 people give up a beautiful Saturday to lean over maps of Richmond, but seeing all 20 tables come back with pretty much the same suggestions, such as more green space, improved transporation such as bringing back the old trolleys, to preserving our treasure, the James River, and our incredible architecture.

The public had Sunday through Wednesday to drop in and add to the suggestions and talk in-depth with Dover Kohl - the Planners leading the process - as well as with the staff from the City’s Department of Community Development. I sat in on an “arts and cultural” session, which wasn’t as pleasing since I was told that ‘you can’t do much about the free market’ when I worried about the potential of unwise development pushing the creative community out, after it has helped to rebuild Downtown. The City must support its creative community if it wants to keep us here, and it can, by thinking creatively to keep rents and taxes low and providing affordable studios and housing. We’d prefer to not have to leave when the Starbucks hits our block.

But when it was all said and done, a sea of people from throughout the community flooded Plant Zero on Thursday night, July 26 to hear the final presentation and recommendations from the week’s work. It was an amazing [sight] to see so many people engaged in the community’s future, and I stay hopeful that smart growth, especially for our Downtown Community, will rise to the top of the many great suggestions that were posed, and that this process won’t be just “compiled and filed” as so many efforts in the past.

I was going to type up my notes from the final presentation, but I realized I should just send readers to the wonderful blog Buttermilk & Molasses, which has every detail you ever wanted to know about the Downtown Master Planning process and which will continue to cover this issue as it progresses, as this is not over, and don’t let your Coucilman forget it!

Thanks everyone for a wonderful 6th Season of First Fridays! We’ve seen a great summer turnout, this being our first of year-round art walk events, and we hope you’ll plan to come out this Friday, August 3 too. We’re working toward a fantastic 7th Season beginning in September, but keep an eye out for additional music and collaborative activities really kicking into gear in October. We greatly appreciate everyone’s support and enthusiasm, and ask that you keep us in mind when you consider your giving plans or when speaking with your elected official. Our First Fridays program has helped revitalize Downtown like no other in the City, and yet, we received no financial support from the City of Richmond this year.

Thanks in advance for your time and consideration.

Best Regards,
Christina Newton, Curated Culture

‘Nuff said.

Meanwhile, in today’s Times-Dispatch, the paper’s op ed page makes the observation � even quoting the late Jane Jacobs, author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities � that Richmond’s most successful economic areas (like Carytown) weren’t built by small groups of citizens with leveraged control over wrecking balls, tax-sucking development authorities or even � sorry � downtown master plans. They were grown from the bottom up, organically � by small businesses and communities, and through grass roots endeavors like Watermelon festivals and other street-level neighborhood events:

Richmonders might want to remember that Carytown is not a direct consequence of a detailed plan. Rather, it rose primarily because entrepreneurs took risks. How many shops and restaurants opened and closed before the neighborhood reached its potential? Carytown benefited from the proximity of residential communities such as the Museum District and the Fan. Credit for Carytown’s renaissance goes to the shopkeepers, restaurateurs, and homeowners who created a neighborhood the entire region appreciates.

Nice to see the RTD come around to our point of view, more than three years after we were making the same observations at this blog.

And you might find this interesting � one of the founders of Save Richmond, Andrew Beaujon, attempted to get an editorial printed in the RTD on this very same subject w-a-a-a-y back in the Fall of 2003. Alas, this editorial was somehow “lost” in the editorial page’s labyrinthian communications system. Undaunted, Beaujon took his essay over to Style Weekly).

Feel free to compare the enlightened spew found in today’s Times-Dispatch with Andrew’s four-year-old rejected piece:

[Richmond] will soon be a one-stop laboratory for urban planners who want to see what a city looks like after it�s tried everything to reclaim its downtown. Everything that is, but what�s worked here already, in Carytown and Shockoe Slip � encouraging the development of shops and night life. Instead, we lurch from massive project to mammoth project. You�d think that a city that has egg on its face from the failed Main Street Station and the failed 6th Street Marketplace would shy away from planning huge retail and entertainment complexes downtown…

Given the paper’s track record of late, readers should be on the lookout for a T-D editorial four years from now, informing everyone how wrong it was for the city to pour $23 million into a wasteful, not-ready-for-prime-time CenterStage (a project that, at this writing, can’t reveal its annual operating expenses to taxpayers) while it continued to ignore, downplay and severely disregard the provable, citizens-first downtown achievements of Curated Culture, First Fridays and the downtown arts community. See you in 2011!!

[And, no offense to those who happened to attend the charrette's "arts and cultural session" � we seem to have missed the advance word on that one � but the City of Richmond does make choices, and clearly sets priorities, when it comes to its so-called "free market." If the new Downtown Plan can't acknowledge an efficiently-run grassroots success story like the Friday Artwalk, and learn from what actually works and doesn't work around here, it won't be much of a plan.]

Posted in Richmond in the news, come the revolution..., moments of civic brilliance | No Comments »

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