The Richmond Lens @richmondlens - Tumblr Blog

Richmond, we need to talk (about Bus Rapid Transit)

I want to talk about Bus Rapid Transit on Broad Street. First, I’d like to take a second to regroup and get clear around what we’re talking about when we talk about BRT on Broad Street. We’re talking about improved quality of life for Richmonders that depend on public transportation for their livelihoods when an efficient rapid transit system shaves 7.5 minutes off of their commute door to door. We’re talking about greater job security for those same individuals will no longer risk being fired because missing 1 bus made them over an hour late. We’re talking about making a shift from auto-centric infrastructure to multi-modal transportation systems that increase access to public spaces, bricks and mortar businesses, and each other. We’re talking about less congestion as a viable and increasingly convenient alternative to cars becomes available. We’re talking about opportunities for increased regional cooperation and interaction. We’re talking about an investment in our city that will benefit the city for decades to come.

Unfortunately, these are not the conversations Richmond is having. The conversations we’re having are about losing left turns on Broad Street or losing parking spaces in dense neighborhoods. We’re having conversations about not in my back yarders’ imagined possible worst case scenarios and losing sight of the bigger picture. Local business owners are understandably concerned about the long term effects of extended construction and changing traffic patterns on their ability to stay open, but we’re turning to torches and pitchforks too soon. We’re having conversations about returning funds for the one of the largest TIGER grants awarded to a municipality in 2014. That’s a conversation about turning down $24.9 million of federal money to invest in our city’s infrastructure, a decision that could diminish our ability to receive federal transportation grants in the future. We’re having these conversations because we are (understandably) skeptical of the leadership we’ve seen in our City Hall. For every thoughtful committed public servant Richmond has, we’ve got a doofus who also turns out to be some kind of criminal. Still, we can be as skeptical as we want about the city’s leadership, but we can not translate that skepticism into blanket opposition to any kind of change.

The root cause of of this narrative derailment seems to be fear. Tuesday night, I went with a few friends to the Fan District Association’s meeting about BRT on Broad St. Our experience at that meeting was frustrating and disappointing in so many ways, largely because of the level of fear in the room. When we’re afraid, it means that we aren’t hopeful and we aren’t considering projects with a mind toward our collective future beyond the borders of any one neighborhood or socio economic class. Fear means we’re so bent on leaving the hardships of the past behind that we become comfortable with “good enough for me right now” and stop imagining the best future we can. Fear means we count “stopping projects and ideas and plans” as achievements even if we never follow up with better ideas in their place (for context: the FDA consistently touts city projects they have halted as their primary achievements). Fear means we stop trying and stop growing and stop accelerating. If we do that we’re going backwards.

As city dwellers in a city on the brink, we don’t have the luxury of standing still. We need to look 50 years ahead of us or 50 years behind us because those are our only two options. BRT is a step forward. It’s the groundwork for a shift in infrastructure will lead to better, faster transportation options even beyond BRT. We shouldn’t imagine worst case scenarios when we dream about Richmond, we should imagine light rail, reduced geographical impediment to employment, taking public transportation to the VMFA or to Churchill or the River or Short Pump. We should imagine walkable streets where small businesses thrive, the arts run rampant, and we all feel safe and welcomed. Imagine BRT as a move toward that future, be a little bit brave, and support the project.

Classic Richmond: City Council's Legislative Recommendations and Requests

The Richmond City Council recently released its "2014 City of Richmond Legislative Proposals for the Virginia General Assembly" detailing both specific pieces of legislation that the Council is asking for and positions the Council will take on other policy issues initiated by the General Assembly. Here we've highlighted some of the more interesting recommendations and requests for session this year.

Because Virginia is a Dillon Rule State, most of this paper is requests to the General Assembly for the tools and permissions necessary for the City Council to attempt certain pieces of legislation. We admire the ideas and sentiments behind many of these requests and are interested to see whether they yield the action necessary to citywide growth.

1. Amend the mandate of SJR 328 (2013) JLARC study of the efficiency and effectiveness of elementary and secondary school funding in Virginia to include a review of the local composite index on school effectiveness.

Here, the City Council is essentially asking the state to re-examine whether Richmond is ACTUALLY more capable of paying for its schools than the surrounding counties. The local composite index (LCI) is a number that uses the true value of real property, the adjusted gross income, and the taxable retail sales of a locality to determine that locality's ability to pay for education costs necessary to Virginia's standards of quality. A higher LCI indicates higher ability to pay, and a greater share of the cost burden. For reference, Richmond City has an LCI of .4635, Henrico .4058, Hanover .4069, Chesterfield .3495, and Goochland .8000.

Richmond is actually better off than three major surrounding counties (Hanover, Henrico, Chesterfield) in terms of LCI, but far worse off in terms of quality of schools. As the City Council begins to improve its working relationship with the School Board and explores innovative funding ideas, more information about what contributes to efficacy (as related to VA SOQ's) and how to improve quality consistency with the rest of the Metropolitan Area will be useful and practically beneficial.

2. Have the Virginia State Crime Commission study the routine use of criminal history information in employee hiring, including the need for such information in relation to job requirements, and its impact on offender re-entry and employment of ex-offenders.

Richmond is one of 49 localities (plus Hawaii) and just 2 in Virginia that do not ask about criminal history on the initial job application for city jobs. The idea here is that by eliminating the often automatic "No" that comes with checking the felony conviction box, re-entry and post incarceration employment will be easier and recidivism rates reduced. Richmond has been recognized for implementing new programs for inmates during their to reduce recidivism and ease re-entry; providing additional opportunities during the re-entry period sounds to us like a logical next step. After all, a productive workforce is better than a large prison population that drains resources.

3. Authorize the City to implement an affordability-based utility rate program for low-income, elderly, and disabled customers. Authorize the City to develop criteria to provide financial assistance for plumbing repairs and water efficient appliance replacement.

We commend the City's efforts to ease certain burdens on the 26.3% of Richmonders who are living in poverty.

4. Give localities the authority to extend employee health insurance and related benefits coverage to include other qualified adults.

This piece of legislation would accomplish two things. First, it would give more than symbolic meaning to the ordinance passed earlier this year extending benefits to spouses of the city's gay employees. Second, it would address Councilwoman Mosby's assertion that allowing a rider on all city employee health plans would be a more inclusive step in terms of insuring Richmond residents. We liked the ordinance when in passed City Council and we like the idea of health insurance for people who need it.

5. Implement the Affordable Care Act by expanding Medicaid coverage to all individuals who earn less than 133% of poverty, are under the age of 65, are not enrolled or eligible for Medicare benefits, and are not qualified for another mandatory Medicaid category.

25% of jobs in Richmond do not pay enough money to support a family of 4 above poverty. Given this, we support the Council's commitment to the working poor of our city.

In addition to these specific legislative requests, the Council has also released its position on certain pieces of legislation that may possibly arise during the General Assembly. We at the Lens especially support the Council's decision to support food desert research and elimination efforts, state funding for conflict resolution programs in communities and schools, increased funding for the State Affordable Housing Trust Fund, and authorization for localities to require their contractors to pay the living wage and ensure compliance.

The General Assembly this year isn't likely to be passing any major legislation. There is a brand new class of Delegates and a slew of special elections to replace Senators and Delegates who are retiring, moving between chambers, and moving on up to the Executive Branch. Additionally, the Republican House of Delegates will have to get used to working with the Democrats in the Executive, which is likely to produce a session that is relatively quiet in terms of new legislation.

Session begins on January 8, 2014 and lasts 60 days.

Richmond Delegation to the General Assembly:

Delegate Betsy Carr (D), Delegate Manoli Loupassi (R), Delegate Jennifer McClellan (D), Delegate Delores McQuinn (D), Senator Henry Marsh (D), Senator Donald McEachin (D)

Is Richmond City an organization set up to progress?

"A sense of urgency". "Radical change". "Bold initiatives". These are phrases and themes that come up over and over again in the discourse about the state of Richmond’s Public Schools. The idea that RPS is in trouble, but we can change with bold and decisive action is propagated by everyone from the Mayor's Office to the members of Richmond's School Board. Further, the evidence is there: innovative research and implementations all over the country show that schools can be turned around and transformed into something new when leadership is willing AND able to implement dramatic but needed change.

And yet - little has changed and nothing is getting better*. So what's going on?

If you had asked me before I started attending City Council and School Board meetings, I would have said it is that we don't have people in leadership positions that are actually invested in and willing to stomach the kind of changes we need to move forward as a city. I had in my mind a vision of officials entrenched in the status quo, in people beholden to the kind of fear that paralyzes systems and causes a Stockholm Syndromic love of "The Devil We Know". However, after a couple of months of close observation, I no longer believe this is the case. Don't get me wrong - there are people in all levels of City Government that either lend very little to progressive efforts or have their own specific agendas. However, there are ample factions of folks legitimately and deeply committed to making things better by any means necessary, and there is a consistent call for bold and decisive action. Even specific proposals as they come up in debate draw widespread agreement - they just rarely get adopted.

I've realized the problem isn't representatives that don't want change, it's an organization whose culture can't produce change.

Politicians often compare running a business to running a government, and in many ways those parallels are misguided. However, one of the few constants for organizations of all kinds, whether they are in the private or public sector, is that they can only operate in the confines of how their culture allows them to operate. Organizations that embrace decisive action and are comfortable with dealing with the blowback that comes change can innovate consistently and effectively. Organizations that focus on the risks and costs of change can not efficiently innovate. It’s that simple. In the corporate world, Apple innovates, Blackberry has meetings about whether they should innovate and punts until next year. Google buys Android more than a year before the iPhone is announced, Microsoft’s CEO laughs at the iPhone. You get the picture. In Richmond's case, our government officials consistently fall into a predictable pattern of attempted innovation coupled with a culture that squashes innovation almost as soon as it's done being proposed and praised. This is a pattern we see so often that we at the Lens now refer to it simply as “Classic Richmond”. This “Classic Richmond” attitude was was encapsulated quickly and perfectly in the following exchange:

.@kristenRVA asks re: HS students' early start, everyone agrees it should be later, Super focuses on how hard change would be - classic #rva

— The Richmond Lens (@RichmondLens)

December 2, 2013

— The Richmond Lens (@RichmondLens)

December 2, 2013

It went like this: Board Member Kristin Nye Larson makes a passionate proposal regarding the research indicating that High School aged children do much, much better when they start school later and suggests the Board examine the first bell times for High School students. The motion is unanimously applauded - every single person who has a voice makes sure to make it know that they agree, including COO Richard Hixon who really is at the podium to speak about a different topic altogether. Once everyone is done saying what a great idea this would be, the interim-Superintendent spends 5 minutes explaining how a start time in line with what has been proven to improve achievement in Richmond's neediest segment (High School) wouldn't be feasible, and that a slightly later start time could be worked out, but that it wouldn't help much. The discussion dies, and the topic is tabled.

This is emblematic of an organization prioritizing their thought pattern thusly:

1. What is easy to implement?

2. What is easy to explain to our constituents?

3. What will radically improve Richmond Public Schools' core problems?

That list needs to be reversed. Period. But who can reverse? One of the clearest ways that Government differs from Business is where leadership comes from. In a business, leadership comes from the top and from the start - a company builds its culture as it begins and is driven largely from the CEO and the C level executives who are hard to replace and wield all the power. Government is different - our culture has to be driven by the people and executed by the leadership who can be replaced at regular intervals by the will of the people, completely the inverse of how a business works (one reason why "Run the government like a business" is a suspect pitch).

The people of Richmond can shift these priorities, but only if we focus on a the signal of progress and not the noise of that the fear of change presents. How do great leaders do this? By defining the metrics we want to see get done and holding the organization accountable for delivering them. Right now, our representatives are driven by the fear of blowback from presenting radical change. We need to turn this on its head and make every single politician afraid of one thing: the status quo. If you can't get measures past that seek to make real change, you won't get phone calls of support from the few who value things the way they are, you'll get a deluge of calls from citizens angry and demanding change. This will give those who are actually agents of change the opportunity to make things happen and will out those with their own agendas quickly and efficiently.

Over the coming months, we'll have our eye on who's supporting things as they are and who's demanding change. You see something? Email us @ [email protected] or tweet us @richmondlens.

NOTES from the Richmond School Board Meeting 12/02/2013

- In the opening vote, we mistakingly asserted that Board Member Shonda Harris-Muhammed had abstained from the vote to amend the agenda. It turns out it was Member Taylor, and she felt that the Board hadn't given the public enough time to review the changes to decide if they wanted to attend. We agree.

- The partners in the "Middle School Renaissance 2020" program to build and measure the effects of "out of school" activities for Middle School students. Their goal is to change the way students think about their schools through after school activities, are backed by a lot of great research and case studies, are privately funded through 2015 and have a pilot program at Henderson Middle School.

- To reiterate - MSR2020 is privately funded, yet 3 separate members asked how much the program cost a total of 7 times.

- In the public comments section of the meeting, there were accusations of blackballing due to not supporting the board and of top down bullying by officials across RPS. The Board was receptive, interested, and in some cases disgusted by the abuses that were being reported. Not a single one was defensive, which is a great sign.

- The School Board voted to move to the next round of exploration on a "2.0 to play" policy for athletes in RPS.

*A note about on-time graduation - it's a problematic metric, but if you remove the speciality schools of Franklin Military, Open High School, and Richmond Community, on-time graduation has dropped or stayed the same the last 4 years for RPS High Schools.

MNL Week 1: "Not in My Backyard" and the Richmond Public School System

City government is a complex and subtle creature, however it is amazing how often it comes down to two phrases: "Not in MY backyard" (NIMBY) and "The education of our children must be our TOP priority". Last night's Richmond City Council meeting was a prime example, where NIMBYism and the plight of urban education were juxtaposed all evening. Over our post-council wrap up beer at Popkin Tavern, we at the Richmond Lens quickly realized we had all come to the same conclusion: this juxtaposition is a problem, and it might just be THE problem.

One of the things that made the problem so apparent was that last night's bouts of NIMBYism and attempted education reform were especially mild. The issue threatening this particular group of citizen's backyards was a decision to change a vacant lot in suburban Stony Point from a commercial zone to a residential zone to allow a developer ready to purchase the land from the owner to build some mid-high rent apartments. The objections of the residents of the neighborhood were numerous: the apartments will increase density, they'll increase traffic, they'll increase noise, and MOST of all: if only they would build an office park instead, we'd have more jobs. The arguments were also largely erroneous: increased density does have numerous benefits, commercial zoning means more restaurants (which are consistently opposed by Richmond neighborhood associations), and building an office park is not an option if nobody wants to build one and would require substantially more parking and rush hour traffic.

What became clear after listening to the testimony was that the residents didn't actually care what they were opposing: they were opposing it because for years the lot hadn't been developed, if the zoning wasn't changed it would remain undeveloped, and if THEIR backyards were left undisturbed, that was a good thing. There is no way any of these residents believe unilaterally that building residences in a residential neighborhood is a bad thing, but doing it where they live, well, they'll pass. It's an understandable, familiar, and altogether destructive attitude that lacks compassion and implies a disturbing isolationism and narrowness of view.

The next issue on the docket was a small education funding reform measure proposed by Councilman Agelasto. The paper would have allocated any real estate tax revenue from the sale of former school properties to the school system through an operations fund. Instead of arguing the merits of paper itself, the argument instead focused on where the larger solution to Richmond's education problems lie: is it funding or is the lack of a plan? Will more funding help Richmond have more than 1 fully accredited High School or will a better plan help us achieve a higher graduation rate? While these two things are tenants of what we need to solve in the future, the past tells us a different story about the root cause of our education problems: NIMBYism.

In 1955, the Brown ruling and subsequent court clarifications forced Virginia schools to be de-segregated, kicking off one of the most shameful periods of in Virginia history known as "Massive Resistance", the greatest instance of NIMBYism the state has ever seen. Led by the Byrd machine, entire school systems shut down to avoid de-segregating some for years. Between 1968-1971, Richmond Schools were forced to institute busing to further desegregate their schools, and despite some of our leader's best efforts, the most harmful process to Richmond's Schools began: White Flight. White folks fueled initially by fear of integrated schools fled to the largely white suburbs, setting off a cascade where even many of the most well intentioned and progressive folks in the city felt that their children no longer had a viable option to send their children to Richmond City public schools.

By the 1990's, the city had lost an entire tax base, as White Flight became "Middle Class" flight, and the middle class with children of school age becoming an endangered species in Richmond. All of this because of one phrase: "Not in my backyard". No integrated schools in my backyard - the march of progress must take place somewhere else.

At the Richmond Lens, we're after this as the root cause of the problems facing not only our city's schools, but our city in general. We need a cooperative, loving, and inclusive attitude before we can change anything. We as a city can be greater than the sum of our individual parts, but only if we're willing to be part of the whole. If we can leave the fear of change, the fear of our neighbors, and the mistakes of our past where they belong: in the past, we can start to create a better future here in Richmond. We think Richmond is a special place, and we know that it has everything it needs to be the greatest city in the world: but we have to do it together. You're welcome in our backyard, anytime.

NOTES

-President Samuels presented Vice President Robertson with a pin honoring 10 years of service with the City Council.

-Zoning changes for the Alta Stony Point development were approved unanimously

-Councilman Parker Agelasto's education appropriations paper was voted down 6-3. Nays were: Jon Baliles, Kathy Graziano, Michelle Mosby, Ellen Robertson, Charles Samuels, and Cynthia Newbille. Ayes were: Parker Agelasto, Chris Hilbert, and Reva Trammel.

-The Council voted 8-1 to allow Dr. William Streiker, the ACTUAL owner of 2200 Monument Ave., to keep his new windows, installed in violation of the Commission of Architectural Review's requirements. Cynthia Newbille was the lone nay voter.

-Good news for RVA cyclists, the council authorized the acquisition of easements from CSX and Rockett's landing for sections of the Virginia Capital Trail, as well as $40,000 to fund the Floyd Ave. Bike Boulevard.

-City Council regulars Chris Dorsey and "Dr." Angela both made appearances, insisting that the city council is a bunch of crooks and illegal squatters, respectively.

-Councilman Jon Baliles doesn't retweet or follow back.

#RVAcouncil #MondayNightLights #RVA #RVApoli

Welcome to The Richmond Lens

We love Richmond. We’re inspired by the potential we see in our city and we know we aren’t alone. At The Richmond Lens we are committed to the thoughtful consideration, collaboration, and participation that will be necessary to launch Richmond over the threshold of greatness.

We’re here to provide clarity amidst the chaos and noise coming from City Hall, and to engage in a citywide discussion about local governance and the pursuit of innovation, education, and vibrancy.

Follow our live updates about tonight’s City Council meeting on Twitter, and check back in soon for our first piece on the proposed Shockoe Stadium.

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

The Richmond Lens