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Mayor Levar Stoney talks with moderators Mariah Williams of the Spark Mill and Susan Winiecki of Richmond magazine. (Photo by Jay Paul)
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Co-moderator Mariah Williams poses a question to Mayor Levar Stoney. (Photo by Jay Paul)
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Richmond magazine Editorial Director Susan Winiecki, a co-moderator, asks a question. (Photo by Jay Paul)
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Mayor Levar Stoney responds to questions. (Photo by Jay Paul)
Mayor Levar Stoney performed well — receiving no fecal emojis indicating a lack of progress — in his midterm review conducted by 12 area nonprofits analyzing key policy promises among four topic areas. The review took place at the Mayorathon: Policy Jam event Thursday night, convened by Richmond magazine and held at the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU.
Homing in on neighborhoods and safety, youth and families, transportation and the urban environment, the nonprofit partners looked at three policy promises from the mayor in each area, grading Stoney’s performance using an emoji-based scale (shown below) of a flexed muscle for “completed,” fingers crossed for “good progress,” a hammer and wrench for “needs work” and a smiley brown poop pile signifying “no movement.”
After discussion of each topic area and the corresponding policies, Stoney was presented with three policy suggestions devised by the nonprofit stakeholders who partnered to present the Policy Jam. Audience applause indicated the popularity of each of the dozen suggestions, which Stoney considered thoughtfully and addressed candidly.
URBAN ENVIRONMENT
The Policy Jam kicked off with a heat island map of the city based on mid-summer measurements, showing which sections had the highest temperatures — an indicator signifying negative impacts on air and water quality.
“A lot of this work is being undertaken by our office of sustainability,” Stoney said, adding, “We will engage in a public process on next steps for our climate action plan, and my hope is to begin implementation in my time as mayor.”
Another big-ticket item pertained to the city’s stormwater and wastewater management infrastructure. Both rain and sewer runoffs are combined when they flow into the city’s treatment plant, but environmental concerns arise when the system exceeds its capacity during severe weather and the mix of waste flows directly into the James River. The latter infrastructure has been a priority, Stoney said, noting the city was recently the first to receive an MS4 (Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System) permit from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.
In response to a policy suggestion that Richmond increase access to green spaces such as parks and recreational areas, the mayor noted a contributing factor in the stark juxtaposition between different areas of the city.
“The places where the city annexed years and years ago is where there isn’t a lot of access to parks and greenspaces,” he said. He noted that currently about 6 percent of emissions are city-related, adding, “We’re working on greening our fleet, too — how we go about purchasing more green vehicles for our vehicles at City Hall.”
Mayor Levar Stoney says he plans to continue being a frequent presence in the community. "A great piece of this job is showing up," he says. (Photo by Jay Paul)
TRANSPORTATION
In response to data indicating an average of three people are injured or killed in the city each day in a traffic-related accident, Stoney was quick to acknowledge that there’s still work to do in terms of increasing access and walkability throughout the city
“What we need to do moving forward is the actual work — we’ve repaired 347 high-visibility crosswalks. We’re doing 144 more this year,” Stoney said.
During construction work, he said, “we have to make sure pedestrians have access to sidewalks,” drawing applause from the audience just two days after a pedestrian was struck and killed by a motorist on West Broad Street.
Some attendees joined the event after a GRTC transit meeting held at the Science Museum of Virginia, which garnered a sizeable crowd, partially in response to a resident’s federal complaint against the transit system, alleging discrimination against low-income and minority routes in the new system redesign that rolled out in tandem with the launch of the Pulse in June.
“There are certain neighborhoods in the city that need increased access,” Stoney said. “We are the largest contributor to GRTC — I believe we can do more, but I also believe the region can do more,” he said, adding, “Stay tuned for the budget next week.”
In response to a policy suggesting the city develop a Richmond Department of Transportation, Stoney said his team is researching the suggestion.
“The people who touch transportation in the city of Richmond weren’t even under the same roof when I took office,” he said. “Now, all the people are in the same place, under the same roof, for the first time.”
The Mayorathon: Policy Jam event included a spoof of Mayor Levar Stoney's enthusiasm for fitness, courtesy of The Peedmont satirical news site. (Photo by Jay Paul)
NEIGHBORHOODS
Summer “office hours” will return this June, where members of the community can speak with the mayor in person to address or express concerns in each district, and social media town halls and livestreams may be held in the near future, too.
“A great piece of this job is showing up, and there’s nothing that gets me excited like when I get to visit neighborhoods or get to visit schools,” Stoney said. “My staff is like, ‘Do you have to go visit every school?’ But that’s just who I am.”
He said his team has “put our own spin on” the Office of Community Wealth Building, established under former Mayor Dwight Jones, which aims to create workforce opportunities for minorities in the city.
“We’ve put more money in it — more funds,” Stoney said. “For me, this is about workforce training — there are a number of people who for years and years may have fallen through the cracks, due to our K-12 system ... so let’s skill them up, build them up and actually give them access to career wealth and opportunity.”
As for the vacant Department of Housing and Community Development director seat, Stoney said he had “a few people on the hook” who ultimately “slipped through our fingers” to go elsewhere, like Raleigh, North Carolina, “and a lot of that has to do with competitive pay and compensation."
Among the round of policy suggestions for the segment was the concept of an “anti-displacement toolkit” accessible to residents in neighborhoods giving way to gentrification in the face of rapid, mostly millennial, population growth.
“I do believe if you lived in this city in 1957, you should be around to live in your home in 2037 as well,” Stoney said to some of the loudest applause of the evening. “There are plenty of people who lived in the city of Richmond when this wasn’t a ‘hot’ city — in the 1980s and 1990s,” he said referencing the crack cocaine epidemic during which Richmond was considered the nation’s “murder capital.”
The mayor also pointed to the city’s rollout of a “first of its kind” eviction-diversion program, which will work in tandem with the courts, justice services and nonprofits to hamper the disproportionate number of preventable evictions in the city.
“Last Thursday I was in a room of 130 pro bono attorneys, and they showed up because they recognized the potential for this eviction-diversion program,” Stoney said. “The number of families in this city living paycheck to paycheck — folks are getting evicted for as little as $200 or $300.”
Housing has been one of Stoney’s focal points during his time in office, and at Thursday’s event he touched on aspects of the complex issue not well understood by most who have never been evicted or inherited property.
“I feel it’s our job to prevent a home from ever falling into delinquency,” he said. “[An elderly person] passes away and the house is passed down, and the family is like, ‘Whoa, I have to pay taxes on this thing?’ and then when they can’t afford the taxes the property sits vacant until it goes to the city to go up for auction.”
SAFETY
As for policing and the pending hire of a new police chief, Stoney emphasized the community participation element as a critical component in selecting the new public safety head, who will oversee more than 700 officers in a challenging urban area contending with high officer attrition rates, largely due to noncompetitive pay in a field of seven competing police departments.
“We’ll also poll members of the [police department] as well since this person will be their boss, too,” he said. “I plan to have a new [police] chief in place by July 1.”
He said the administration is synthesizing the feedback from a community survey and four engagement meetings to create the job listing for the national search to fill the position.
“Our job isn’t just to fight crime and lock people up, but to lift people up, too,” he said, echoing the philosophy former Richmond Police Chief Alfred Durham championed, and hoped would mark his legacy, leading the department.
Stoney noted a Washington Post article about the city's high rate of violent crime closures, but also pointed to 15 percent of crime in the city being attributed to “the big six” public housing communities.
“I don’t want somebody who lives in Creighton, Fairfield — all the courts — I don’t want the first thing people think to be crime,” he said, emphasizing a need for more after-school programs. “Our former chief said that many, many times — giving our young people something to do after the bell, universalizing access to after school programs, we’ve just got to give our young people more to do.”
Audience members cheered and applauded in response to the policy recommendations they support. (Photo by Jay Paul)
SCHOOLS
The public school funding paradigm has plagued the city’s high-need district for more than a decade, when state funding for schools stagnated in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis. Stoney said pointedly that if “we can’t change their minds,” referring to Virginia legislators, then “we should change their seats,” as he reminded the audience of the upcoming election year.
And if that doesn’t work, “We should use every legal tool in the toolbox,” Stoney said. “Other [school districts] have taken their states to court ... localities like ours have stepped up to the plate time and time again.”
Part of the issue, he contended, is the formula for doling out public education dollars, which relies on the Local Composite Index (LCI) used to appropriate funding based on real estate tax revenues.
“The LCI shortchanges [Richmond Public Schools] because it factors in the total value of local real estate without taking into account how much is tax-exempt or state-owned,” Stoney said, noting that in Richmond — where much of the downtown area is occupied by nonprofits, houses of worship and state buildings, all of which are tax-exempt — the city loses $3 billion in annual revenue.
When pressed on alternative revenue streams to fund schools, Stoney said, “Well there’s only one stream available — it’s the real estate tax. It’s the only option ... to make this happen, it will take some courage and take some being bold.”
NAVY HILL
After the policy discourses, the moderators took questions from audience members submitted on index cards halfway through the event. One question cut to the chase: “Your campaign was run on basic services, not shiny projects. Why divert property taxes from 80 blocks downtown to the North of Broad/Navy Hill project downtown?”
Stoney explained that for the city to be competitive, it needs to start generating a lot more revenue. He cited estimates that the Navy Hill project would generate $1.8 billion over 30 years, compared to $480 million without it.
When co-moderator Susan Winiecki (Richmond magazine’s editorial director) pressed on when the public might expect to see ordinances introduced to City Council with regard to the project, Stoney laughed.
“It’s going to take more than four months,” he said. “Our attorneys are at the table with the developers’ attorneys, [and] if those returns were not to materialize — I don’t want that to be on the backs of city residents and taxpayers. Once the agreement we’ve agreed in principle and memorialized in those documents and submitted to Council — in the past we’ve rushed opportunities like this; I think we need to dot our ‘i’s and cross our ’t’s this time.”
