The following is an extended version of the candidate interview that appears in the October issue of Richmond magazine and has been edited for length and clarity.
Photo by April Greer
Richmond magazine: Why did you decide to run for mayor?
Kim Gray: Having spent the last 12 years in public service, eight years on school board and four years with City Council, there are so many people who are being left out and not getting the services and needs met that the city is here to provide. I think it's really important to make sure that we're not leaving people out or behind, and that we're getting those needed services to the people, especially those who don't have a voice in their government all the time. [Citizens who are] not the most connected [are] the ones who are most vulnerable.
RM: Who do you consider the vulnerable population?
Gray: Our unsheltered populations, our students with disabilities, our seniors who are sometimes very isolated and on fixed incomes, our children who are either not having their needs met due to abuse or neglect or lack of family resources.
RM: How has the pandemic impacted your ability to campaign and meet Richmonders?
Gray: We've gotten really creative and we're having more outdoor events, and I've been fortunate that people are still willing to stand in the rain. We are doing more virtual meetings and just being as creative as possible. We have established COVID-19 guidelines for the campaign so we're making sure that our volunteers and our hosts and hostesses are kept safe during this pandemic.
RM: How would you lead Richmond out of COVID-19 relief and into recovery over the next four years?
Gray: I'm very hopeful that there will be a vaccine within the next eight to 12 months. There's so much uncertainty with respect to the economy and our economic recovery, but the first and foremost recovery that we need to be thinking about is our health and our mental health. Even those who haven't been impacted physically by COVID-19 have felt the effects of being shut in and being isolated. We're designed to be close and connected to other humans, so I think that we need to shore up all the providers of mental health services and medical services. I don't think we have met the testing needs of the community yet. That's really critical, especially going into another flu season and we've got students coming back to campus. Those are concerns I've heard from the communities, because the academic campuses are in the district that I serve. I'm hearing a lot of concerns from residents around whether it is making us less safe to have the students return to campus, so we're doing everything we can to mitigate any potential impacts. Moving forward, [we need to shore up not only testing availability], but good education on how to prevent COVID-19 and other flu epidemics and good resources for [those who are] affected, and family support for those with family members who are affected. I've known lots of families locally who've been impacted and it's a very difficult thing, not just for the individual, but for the entire family. I have a family member who was on a respirator for 23 days. Once they go into the hospital, you can't go touch them or see them or check in on them and if they're really sick, you can't do the FaceTime that a lot of the hospitals are providing, so it's a scary time for everybody involved. I think that's where we have to make sure we have support groups and mental health services available, whether virtually or other means, [and] that we are making sure that our community is healthy and safe on all levels, physically and mentally.
RM: How would you help small and minority-owned businesses recover from the pandemic?
Gray: I think we're starting off, but I don't know that we're doing enough there. We have had delays with respect to distributing CARES Act relief funds for impacted businesses. We did allocate $3 million from the council side for that. We're still waiting for the city's administration to come up with the application and the process for businesses to access that, and I've seen far too many businesses fail and pack up their belongings and shutter their businesses in the waiting process, so I'd like to see money dispersed more rapidly from those CARES Act funds.
We did have some loan funds that came from the EDA that were forgiven and turned into grants but as this drags out, a lot of the businesses — especially [those in] the restaurant industry — are losing money every month that they operate because they’re not at their full capacity, but in many cases, they brought all their staff back.
RM: Alongside the pandemic, this summer’s protests have brought disparities related to race and policing to the forefront. What would you do to reshape policing in the city?
Gray: I've been working with groups for several years now [during] my term on council, with [the Richmond Transparency and Accountability Project] and the NAACP and other community groups on those exact issues. I think the first step is to have that community review board that looks at incidents. I think that there are some structural issues.
When police leadership wants to fire someone in their ranks, those individuals have a grievance process that leads them up to the personnel board, and in many cases, the decision to release an officer is overturned by the personnel board. For me, and in my experience on school board, I always err on the side of the person who's not in a position of authority, like the children and the students who would be impacted by that teacher remaining in that building or in that classroom. I think that philosophically, you can't err on the side of the employee when they have positions of deep respect and authority. I think that we have to restore respect for the police, and the only way to do that is for the police to be respectful to the community. It's a two-way street.
The community review board is one step in the direction of reviewing use of force incidents, especially having a group from the community that is able to review those incidents and bring recommendations to city council and/or the mayor. Having a third-party citizen group that is impacted that [includes] people from those most-policed communities that are Latinx and low-income African American communities, especially our public housing communities who are experiencing more policing than other communities [is important]. A lot of it is due to crimes that are occurring within those communities, so what I'm hearing from many of the folks in those communities is that they want more police, but they want better relationships and police who actually are part of their community and care for their safety.
The second piece that I was talking about is when an officer is disciplined and it rises to the level of a recommendation for termination. Right now, that grievance process takes them through different layers [of] the administration, and ultimately, they end up in front of a personnel board which is an appointed board of citizens and professionals, and they determine whether or not that termination happens. I think that there needs to be stronger weight on the side of protecting the public. I use the school board example as why I think if we have allegations or incidents with respect to people in those positions of trust, they should be weighted heavier and those folks shouldn't get the benefit of the doubt if a recommendation for termination has been brought forward. If a chief is recommending firing this officer, we need to weigh that heavily and we shouldn't necessarily be in a position to override it without some seriously compelling evidence.
RM: What are your thoughts on demands raised by protesters to defund the police?
Gray: I think we need to realign the police budget with the needs of the community. There definitely is room in the police budget for opportunities for our community to have better interactions. I think that there needs to be better training.
Defunding, by definition, means to take all the money away. I think that money can be redirected to areas that assure better public safety, whether it's via police or social workers or mental health or community [groups] who can assist and intervene in situations before they rise to where they need a police intervention.
RM: Although it was overshadowed by COVID-19, the Navy Hill redevelopment plan was one of the biggest local stories of the last year. What lessons did you learn from that process, and how would you improve the Navy Hill area in a more equitable way?
Gray: The first thing is transparency and community engagement and involvement. In any large area project like this, we need total community buy-in because we're the ones paying for a lot of the infrastructure and the debt that's incurred.
We need sound definitions of what affordable housing is with respect to our city affordability rate, because what we were being offered was affordable housing regionally, and averaging incomes regionally when we have so many people who fall below the poverty line [is] not going to be affordable for a vast majority of our citizens. I think that setting reasonable expectations and laying out what the project is and what it entails, what community benefits we can expect, what the negative externalities are and what it is going to cost us [is important]. I think that all information needs to be out on the table, that we need to have our eyes wide open and we need to look at our return on investment and make sound decisions that have community input and buy-in.
RM: Kids across the city are returning to remote learning this fall, but parents have raised concerns around widening learning gaps in the virtual setting. How would you address those concerns?
Gray: I'm an RPS parent — I have the same concerns. As a single working mother, it's very challenging to figure out this virtual setting, and what concerns me the most are the calls that I've gotten in the past couple of weeks from parents of children with severe disabilities and some with moderate learning disabilities. I think that we need to make sure that we are individualizing every child's experience to the extent that we can. I think for exceptional education, we need to make exceptions and find ways to make sure that we are engaging with our most vulnerable students who will lose a lot of what they've gained with their schooling. I’ve worked on the broadband gap from the time I was on school board to city council. We had a plan to close the gap and to provide broadband citywide, especially in our public housing areas and other places where access is either limited or non-existent. When we have as many students as we do that don't have computers — and I'm told that procurement is taking way too long — and we may start the school year with students who don’t have Wi-Fi and computer tools provided by the school district, I think that we are in a serious circumstance and I think that all hands on deck for the school district [are needed]. All resources need to go to assuring that every student has contact with their school and their particular teacher, and that every single child has a plan.
I have a grandmother who called me when this all started and said she couldn’t read or write and didn’t have access to the internet. We need to understand and meet our families where they are, and if we have families that don't have literacy, how will they help their students? Every single child needs an individualized plan that meets their individual needs. I also think that we are putting families in a crisis financially, especially with younger children who can't be left alone. There are lots of family households [with] either single parents or multiple adults in the household who have to work just to make ends meet. We need to be working with our community partners, the YWCA and the Boys and Girls Club. We need to get creative and innovative on how we can allow for opportunities for children to be able to be educated in a different setting when parents have to go to work.
RM: Richmond schools face a bevy of challenges that existed well before the pandemic like racially segregated student bases and low graduation and accreditation rates. How would you work to improve the city’s schools during your next four years as mayor?
Gray: If we want all students to be able to access a modern school building, we have to ‘rightsize’ the schools. We are building schools today that are already over capacity before they open. We need a full-on rightsizing rezoning, which may mean that schools close. We have schools on one side of town that are at 50% capacity, and then we've got some that exceed 100% capacity, so rightsizing the school districts and assuring that we have a plan that puts school facilities as a priority should be people’s No. 1 priority.
On the academic side, we have seen more funding go to schools in the district and that hasn't resulted in better outcomes for our students. I think leadership and having accountability with every dollar that we spend [is key] because many of those dollars have been divided up, so less and less of each dollar goes into the classroom to directly impact students. I would make sure that we have accountability measures in place.
The current mayor will tell you he's proud of having fully funded the school board's request, but during his tenure, we've gone from 20% school dropout rates to now pushing 30%, so obviously, money is not the singular answer. It's how those resources are allocated and impact our students’ learning on a daily basis.
RM: Do you think the increase in dropouts has anything to do with the pandemic?
Gray: These numbers are pre-pandemic. I think that we are in an academic crisis at this point. It's layered with the pandemic and there are lots of concerns I hear from folks every day about accountability within the school district and who's required to come to even [attend] a Zoom meeting when they're on payroll. Leadership told teachers out of compassion that they don't have to attend all school meetings, but several folks have taken jobs while they're still on the school payroll and that's why they're not able to attend these meetings. There needs to be accountability. If you're stuck in the house taking care of a sick relative, then that should be communicated to your principal and we can give you an excused absence, but there shouldn't be a blanket [policy]. We have to show up for our kids every day. If you're not able to show up for the students, then you shouldn't be [taking] compensation to do that.
RM: How would you work to curb evictions and expand safe and affordable rental housing in the city?
Gray: A huge amount of [those eviction numbers] are driven through public housing evictions. I think we need to shore up our public housing processes. A lot of times, people will take on work and not necessarily report it right away and then they'll owe back money because their rent adjusts based on their monthly income. I hear from lots of public housing residents who are on the brink of eviction, and it's not a whole lot of money that they owe, but it's very difficult working with the management [in] those respective housing projects.
I think that we need to be more willing to work with residents who fall into those situations, but [we] also have put $6 million of our COVID-19 relief from the CARES Act funds [toward] eviction diversion. I want to make sure that those dollars are being utilized in a way that is sustainable because we can’t just simply pay people's rent. If they don't have a singular incident that created their eviction, they're going to fall back into that situation again.
We have to do both at the same time. We have to look at [the] long term, creating more affordable housing units, we need to consider the big picture about keeping our economy and the city going. A lot of people are out of work. The restaurant industry, for one, employs thousands of Richmond residents who aren't getting those tips or wages right now. We've got to look at all sides of the equation and make sure that we're shoring up the economic development piece so that jobs are good and can pay affordable rent.
I think there are some short-term things we can do. The eviction moratorium is helping but there are also landlords who are in jeopardy of losing property because they can't pay the mortgages. I think that we need to develop a comprehensive plan that creates living wage job opportunities in the city. I think that we need to encourage and incentivize more affordable housing stock developments, and I think that we need to provide that immediate assistance and make sure that those dollars are being utilized to their maximum ability to assist people who end up in a crisis and are facing eviction.
RM: After years of debate, most of the Confederate statues are gone from Monument Avenue. What do you think the city should do to replace them and tell the story more fully?
Gray: What I learned from serving on the Monument Avenue Commission was lots of history that we don't tell. As an African American growing up in Richmond, I didn't know about the forgotten 14 U.S. colored troops who won Medals of Honor [and] really were pivotal in turning the Civil War around to the side of the Union. I would like to see more of our history told and the more complete story.
There has to [be] total community engagement and conversation because it means different things to different people. I've gotten calls from people who say ‘you have to leave the pedestals.’ I've gotten calls from people that say ‘take them away, grind them up so they can never be used again.’ People want to [melt] down the statues, other people want to preserve them so that you never forget, so I think that we need to bring people together [in] dialogue and find common ground and come with a common vision for what our city looks like and how we can tell more of our story, and in a very diverse and caring and compassionate way.
RM: How would you bring people together during this time?
Gray: It's hard to do virtually. I'm hopeful that we're going to be moving into phases where we can plan that out and have community meetings that include everyone throughout the city. It may not happen in the immediate future, but it's got to be a deliberate community engagement piece that is all inclusive.
RM: What makes you the right person for the job?
Gray: I have the most experience. I am connected to our community. I was born here. I am a mom. I've lived in the Jackson Ward community for nearly 30 years, but my family dates back over 100 years in the Jackson Ward and Carver communities. I think that my heart for the city, my passion and my work ethic are what make me the strongest candidate to be our next mayor.
