Richmond City Council is due to vote tonight on the Richmond Public Schools Facility Master Plan update — which details the closing of old schools and the building of new ones. Millions and millions of dollars are at stake, and so is a coherent vision for the future of our public schools.
Only problem is: The plan that has been made available for citizen perusal on the city council website — attached to the ordinance — is missing half of its pages (we get the odd ones, not the even ones).
This is particularly strange because a complete pdf version of the plan has been available on the RPS website for some time now. You can read it here. Nope, I don’t think we can blame the schools administration for this one. Or the Mayor’s office. This would appear to be all Richmond City Council’s doing.
Of course, this won’t be the first time that Council has not provided the full information to taxpayers on what they are voting on. But normally, this only happens when the ordinance involves huge amounts of public money being funneled to secretive private-partnerships. Of course, any other community would update this ordinance immediately with the full plan, and then wait two weeks so that parents and taxpayers are fully informed about what is happening and can reasonably give necessary input. But as we’ve learned from previous experience, Richmond is not just any other community.
I can’t say it any better than school board member Carol Wolf, who sent a letter to council members asking them to postpone the vote: “Even if the paper were to be amended, a vote tonight would deny to the majority of Richmond citizens the opportunity the right to know what City Council is about to do. Further, it denies to non-RPS parents and taxpayers an opportunity to address the issues in this paper. The citizens of Richmond deserve to be able to read more than every other page of this document before City Council votes.”
And isn’t it strange that when these kind of things occur, you can usually find the name “Bill Pantele” attached somewhere? Hmmmm….?
Update: At Monday’s meeting, Richmond City Council agreed that it might be a good idea that citizens actually get the chance to see what our legislators will be voting on BEFORE they vote. I realize that the idea of being fully informed about important decisions involving the future of our schools may seem like a wacky idea to some of the more “certifiable” representatives of the local blogosphere (no link necessary). But it looks like the council — including, it must be said, Bill Pantele — have decided that it is important, and have put the vote off for two weeks. Seems like a no-brainer to me too. Good show.