If you happened to read my Back Page essay in Style Weekly a few weeks ago, you already know about the “visioning” that greater Richmond’s business community dreamed up while on their recent junket to Charleston, South Carolina.
These visions have taken flight, say the bigwigs. From Friday’s Richmond Times-Dispatch:
Spurred on by recommendations in the Crupi report, public and private interests created an alliance yesterday to plan for the future of the nine-locality Richmond region.
The Richmond Regional Planning District Commission voted unanimously to join and play a major role in the Capital Region Collaborative, which is an entity created by the Greater Richmond Chamber after the report was issued nearly six months ago.
“The planets are aligned; the timing is right,” said John E. Gordon Jr., a commission member who also is a Hanover County supervisor. “The region’s political and business leaders were following parallel paths, and now those paths have merged.”
A group of 40 business leaders and companies paid $150,000 for Texas-based business consultant James A. Crupi to evaluate the area. His report called the Richmond region an underachieving area that needed a plan for the future.
I want to stop here and underscore one of the quotes given above from Mr. Hanover County: “The region’s political and business leaders were following parallel paths, and now those paths have merged.”
This confirms who is really collaborating in this “Collaborative” — political and business leaders, a.k.a. the same old voices. And (surprise, surprise) they even know what direction they are going in. Now all these path mergers need is some sort of process to validate where it is they already want to go and it’s Showtime!
I’d like to keep an open mind, I really would. But the Capital Region Collaborative looks like one more in a series of Richmond old boys clubs spun off from the Chamber of Commerce where we see a limited gene pool of aging lawyers, energy executives, politicians and developers joining forces to pull all their puppet strings in unison. The big deal here is that a wider pool of bigwigs have joined this particular club.
This new public-private entity comes on the scene with alleged plans to involve the rest of us in whatever proposals have already been formulated by business leaders and their political friends on faraway junkets. Considering the plethora of recent studies and surveys and consultants that have spoken to the importance of community inclusion and transparency in Richmond (not to mention fairness, common sense and the cultivation of young people), one can only hope that the CRC goal is sincere and not just spin.
We learn from Friday’s article that Robert Grey, a lawyer at Hunton & Williams, will lead this new Capital Region Collaborative. You remember him, right? He led the city’s Performing Arts Committee two years ago. In the Times-Dispatch article, Mr. Grey sought to reassure the rest of us that everything will be just fine, don’t worry and be happy:
“Ours will be a process built on inclusiveness, transparency, engagement, accountability and sustainability.”
Problem is: When he said these words, Mr. Grey was all but channeling the performance he gave in May 2006, when the subject at hand was the non-existent public input that was being accepted by the Performing Arts Committee he chaired.
From Richmond.com, two years ago:
Robert Grey, chairman of the [performing arts] committee, said in the next 120 days the committee would solicit the public’s input “to make sure we are on track and are accountable to those whose funding we’re asking for.”
Of course, longtime Save Richmond readers remember what happened after that. The next time the city heard from Mr. Grey and his Performing Arts Committee, it was not to call a series of widely-advertised public meetings so that Richmond taxpayers and genuine arts professionals, patrons and performers could give input into a publicly-funded arts center project. No, it was to reveal to us that his committee had just hired an expensive consultant to change the name of the Virginia Performing Arts Foundation’s woeful arts center proposal to “CenterStage” and that everything was cool.
This was determined (according to Richmond.com)….
after interviewing more than 90 people in the Richmond metropolitan area regarding their perception of local performing arts.
So here is the benchmark for accountability and public input that was set by Mr. Grey and his earlier committee of the connected — a whole 90 people “in the Richmond metropolitan area” (meaning: unnamed folks who live in the counties) giving their opinions to a private consultant about a name change and the public “perception” of a project that was being funded exclusively by city (not county) residents, one that had already wasted $10 million of city (not county) dollars.
Is this the kind of thorough public input and accountability we can expect from the Capital Region Collaborative? If so, God help us.
While I’m on the subject, let’s stop for a minute and talk about the Downtown Master Plan, which many within the business community and the city’s planning commission resented for its citizen-first (as opposed to developer- and VCU-suckling) approach (take a look at the revised and edited plan and count the red marks for yourself). The Master plan was conceived and approved by a truly Democratic group of hundreds of area citizens — not just a knitting circle of connected corporate figures (although they were part of the process too — see how this “inclusion” stuff works?). Up to this point, the public process for the hotly-debated plan has been thorough, transparent and well-attended.
So it is sad to note the incredibly inconvenient time slated for the planning commission’s final public hearing on the Master Plan — scheduled for 1:30PM on Monday, May 19th (5th Floor, City Hall). Why does one get the feeling that there will be more people of independent means at this particular meeting, as opposed to everyday citizens who have normal 9-5 jobs? Did I mention that it was the FINAL meeting?
At least the planning commission is giving us all advance warning. Mr. Grey’s Performing Arts Committee was incapable of that — in their year together, that committee held one single public meeting where taxpayers could theoretically ask questions. This meeting was not advertised or widely-announced, and members of the press were notified so late that they could not report in advance on the meeting.
Inclusiveness, transparency, engagement, accountability — nowhere to be found.
Sustainability? Who cares… as long as someone else — Joe Taxpayer — is footing the bill.
In short, it’s nice to hear that “the region’s political and business leaders are following parallel paths and now those paths have merged.” Whether or not the rest of us will be asked to go along on this particular walk (instead of being the ones consistently walked on) is the outstanding question of the day.