Heard the Noise, Seen The Light ; On Fire With Hiring; A Year From Now?; Higher Water Rates Pay For What Exactly?; Takin’ It To The Streets.
RVA 5x5 - March 18, 2023
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STORY #1 — Heard the Noise, Seen The Light
Well, it seems the Mayor has finally picked up on a problem on Richmond’s streets that many of us have known about for three+ years. If you live Downtown, or in the Fan, or Oregon Hill, Jackson Ward, the Museum District, Randolph, Scott’s Addition, Byrd Park, Malvern Gardens, parts of Northside, Monroe Ward, or several other neighborhoods, the sound of jet-like roaring from annoying packs of motorcycles has permeated the air at night (usually on weekends) that would wake Rip Van Winkle with ease.
And for three+ years, nothing has been done. I have talked to those in public safety who have been told for years that these insanely loud gatherings of cyclists, noisemakers, and idiots — whatever you want to call them — are off limits for stopping or arrest, even if they gather by the dozens (even during the day) and violate the city’s non-enforced noise ordinance or dozens of traffic laws in and around Bryan Park, Byrd Park, or on Broad Street.
But this past Thursday afternoon, several noisy riders caught the Mayor’s attention in Shockoe Bottom and he not only called the police chief to track them with an airplane, but he also later made sure that all the local media outlets (all three TV stations and the Times-Dispatch) knew about it; the result was three young men from the Tri-Cities area were arrested (ages 19, 18, 17), one stolen gun was recovered, and one teen escaped.
Jon Burkett from CBS6 reported that the Mayor called the Chief after witnessing the youths causing consternation in Shockoe Bottom on Thursday evening.
"Obviously every situation is different. Yesterday's events started with Mayor Stoney notifying me that he saw them in the Shockoe Bottom heading westbound," Interim Richmond Police Chief Rick Edwards said of the Thursday evening situation. "After the first attempt to pull these individuals over with our lights and sirens, they refused. So we backed off. Turned the lights off and let the airplane do it at a safe distance."
The police later reported that "The bike operators were driving unlawfully, traveling the wrong way down one-way streets and against the flow of traffic on Richmond Highway and Belvidere Street. The bike operators were also driving recklessly on sidewalks, through yards of private properties, and failing to stop at stop signs and traffic lights."
With the help of the regional Metro Aviation Unit, Chesterfield Police, and Virginia State Police, the riders were tracked and followed through Chesterfield County via Chippenham Parkway without incident.
Delaney Murray at WRIC also reported that the same time the Mayor called the Chief, “police were beginning to see several calls about reckless driving by dirt bikers throughout Richmond.”
Good effort by the Mayor for reporting it, and good work by the Chief and the Police for monitoring, following, and resolving the situation with assistance and patience. For those of us in any of the above-listed and other neighborhoods, we have quit calling the police about these noisemakers because by the time the report gets to the police, they are long gone and keep on moving.
It’s good to know the Mayor has finally come around to the same concern and danger that all of the other neighborhoods have been dealing with since the pandemic; perhaps now that he has seen it and understands it, something actually can be (and hopefully will be) done to minimize it or eliminate it. Riding dirt bikes is one thing — riding them on sidewalks, going the wrong way on streets, riding through people’s yards, and ignoring traffic signals with impunity is something else entirely.
Maybe the Mayor will see this not just as a media opportunity, but a real effort to finally allow the police to enforce the law on streets (see Story #5) and prevent our streets, sidewalks, front yards and neighborhoods from becoming a backdrop for the next filming of the Road Warrior.
STORY #2 — On Fire With Hiring
If you read the news lately, you find problems with the staffing level in almost every department. Social Services has a backlog of weeks and months for people to receive benefits; the Police can't fully staff shifts at peak times so calls for service or help do unanswered; sometime calls to 911 don’t go through because of a 20%+ vacancy rate in operators who answer calls as fast as they can; Public Utilities is billing erroneous, estimated charges to thousands of customers because of faulty equipment that hasn’t been replaced and they don’t have enough people to read meters to bill for actual instead of estimated water and gas usage; the finance department accounting team has only half of their leadership posts filled; human resources can’t hire people fast enough for other departments because their own department is only about half-staffed and they can’t process applications fast enough. On and on.
The Mayor nor the Chief Administrative Officer have done anything to sound the alarm or light the fire of urgency in filling these positions so residents can get the service delivery level they expect (or at least hope for). It takes more than offering large raises to fill positions — you have to have recruit, process, and make the work environment attractive to potential employees, especially these days where competition for workers is more intense than ever.
But one department in the City is not waiting for our “leaders” to do something about vacancies and meeting the challenge head on — and that’s a good thing because when you call the Fire Department, you don’t want them to say it might be a while before they can respond because they are short-staffed.
Jeremy Lazarus has the story this week in the Free Press that Fire Chief Melvin Carter said the Fire Department is now fully staffed after facing a shortage of 48 positions only six months ago. A graduation class in October cut that number in half and today there are no vacancies in the ranks.
Other city departments are a mess. From the shortages in the well covered Social Services Department, to a story this week by Tyler Layne at CBS6 who talked with he Department of Public Utilities Director (see next story for more) and found, astonishingly:
DPU is down more than half of the employees in some fields, including leadership and management roles.
There are only 12 to 15 technicians who work on equipment in the field and there should be 35-40.
The customer call center has 15 agents; there should be 40.
Please hold…..
That is a common refrain across departments at City Hall. Thankfully, recruiting for the Fire department picked up after the Mayor and Council raised the pay in last year’s budget, which will be followed by another raise in July if the proposed budget is approved (which should be, pay-wise). But other city departments also saw pay bumps last year and will see them again this year — but sadly, no one on the second floor seems to have figured out how to translate that to attracting and hiring the needed personnel to serve the city. But Fire Chief Carter has been aggressive and figured it out (maybe, it’s because he is not on the second floor).
Chief Carter also has disclosed that 72 recruits are now in training, which he said is one of largest classes since Richmond launched a professional department in 1858. The class is so large that 36 are training at a Henrico County facility.
Chief Carter announced in September a plan to install the additional companies being notified that the department had received a $13.7 million grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The chief said in September that grant will help rebuild a department that has had 13 companies disbanded since 1970 while, at the same time, calls for service have grown more than 700 percent.
Sounds like it might be time to call the Fire Department to bring their lessons to others at City Hall who don’t know how to put out a fire and save a building from internal collapse.
STORY #3 — A Year From Now…?
The Department of Public Utilities has faced some tough music in recent weeks was an audit revealed all kinds of poor billing practices by using estimated instead of actual billing charges (which goes against their own policy), a backlog of broken equipment, software contracts that are ignored, and staffing shortages that make servicing accounts harder and more frustrating for residents. You can read a summary of the audit and the Audit Committee meeting here from Tyler Layne at CBS6.
Director April Bingham told Layne a multitude of issues are contributing to the billing issues, the equipment issues, and the customer service issues. Bingham listed the following challenges:
DPU's billing system is more than 40 years old;
The Auditor found that some of the meter readings generate exceptions that should be flagged for review and identify five potential exceptions. If such an exception is flagged: “Staff is responsible to research, clear out the exceptions, and make corrections to billings. Staff will estimate a bill if they are unable to determine if the reading is correct or if a meter has an open service request.”
If those exceptions are not cleared and/or the bills are estimated, bills can quickly turn out to be large and go unpaid, leading to delinquency and more fees and uncollected revenue (see the pattern here?)
Meters and infrastructure are aging, including about 9% of electronic reading transmitters being more than 10 years old;
Every department has a plan to replace old equipment, from emergency vehicles, to trucks, to computers, to radios, etc. DPU should (already) have a replacement plan for their equipment, especially since reading meters and billing residents is kind of an important function.
A lack of oversight and accountability processes are in place to ensure customer concerns are addressed in a timely manner;
City departments are only as accountable as they want to be. If you are not willing to accept criticism and accept ideas from employees and customers, then there will never be accountability of fixing what is wrong. Try starting with a suggestion box (employees are privately saying they are not listened to).
The Director has said the department is trying to resolve customer concerns over billing between one and three months and sending out “messaging” to help you better understand your bills and if your charges are for actual usage or estimated.
That is all hopeful and we can check our coats at the door and hope they can get it together, but after the salt chaser, the most disappointing thing about the story is that Bingham said the department hopes to have all new billing technology — by December 2025.
"A new billing system would bring about automation and innovation and technology. With a push of a button, we could see things and do things quicker, faster, smarter, and that's what I'm hanging my hat on for the long-term solution," Bingham said.
That is almost three years away and if it takes that long to implement a new billing system, then it won’t roll out on time and it will be anything but new by then.
Bingham said she is up for the challenge to make these changes — and there are a lot of them. She has the right attitude in making what is nothing but a very bold promise and prediction: “A year from now, we won’t be having this conversation. A year from now, we will have things better. A year from now, we will look back and say, 'Wow, we did it,'" she said.
I’m marking my calendar.
STORY #4 — Higher Water & Gas Rates Pay For What Exactly?
Last week we took a closer look at the Department of Social Services budget and the lack of urgency or funding to properly staff the department to handle the monthly caseload that has doubled since the start of the pandemic to more than 3,200 cases per month.
This week, we found an interesting dichotomy in the Public Utilities section of the FY2024 budget that contrasted with what was said in the Audit Committee meeting, as mentioned in the above CBS6 story:
As far as recruiting and retaining staff, [DPU Director] April Bingham said she was grateful that the mayor proposed an 8% increase for city employees in next year's budget. The raise will impact all city departments and is not specific to DPU.
The mayor's budget includes a steep increase in utility rates that for the average water/gas user will mean paying an extra $9 dollars per month, or about $106 per year (on average). Chief Administrative Officer Lincoln Saunders said during the meeting that the increase in utility rates would help cover the pay raise for city employees (emphasis mine):
"I think April mentioned, one of the major drivers for any city department's budget and most city department's budget is personnel. As we've talked about staffing issues, etc, being competitive when it comes to what we can offer our employees, be they in public works public utilities, finance or any other department of the city. It's one of the reasons that the mayor included in his proposed budget an 8% general wage increase that applies to our utility departments as well. And it's reflected in the rate changes to cover that. We know we have to be competitive in compensation and as well as work environment etc. To fill these critically vacant positions and given that we have seen inflation around 13% over the last two years. Last year, we were able to provide a 5% wage increase... This year at 8%. We are doing our best to help our employees keep up with higher costs as well as to maintain competitiveness in the market."
That’s all well and good — if you want good people you have to pay them fairly and offer them a good working environment (which is questionable at the city these days, but that’s another story). Contrary to Saunders’ statement, the actual language of the budget says that the rate hikes we will be paying are not for employee wages, as he stated in the meeting. In fact, on Page X of Mayor Stoney’s own budget transmittal letter to City Council, the Mayor wrote:
“Due to the increasing costs of maintaining infrastructure, compliance with regulatory requirements for system safety and reliability, and maintaining utility bond ratings, the Department of Public Utilities has proposed a rate increase of 3.75 percent for natural gas, 4.0 percent for water, 6.5 percent for wastewater, and 8.75 percent for storm water, to be effective July 1.
As in past years, these adjustments are necessary to:
Remain in compliance with DPU’s Financial Policies,
Provide adequate working capital for each of the utilities,
Provide sufficient funding for cash contributions to capital projects,
Maintain sufficient coverage ratios for debt and equity coverage, and
Maintain or improve our bond ratings.
It is estimated that the combined increase in cost for all utilities will be $8.86 per month for residents. • Gas: $3.79 • Water: $1.30 • Wastewater: $3.38 • Stormwater: $0.39”
There is nothing in that section that says we will all be paying at least $106 more annually for higher water and gas rates (on average) to cover the raises for employees. The rate hike is supposed to be going to fix the very old water and sewer system we have that costs a fortune to maintain (and a dilemma that all old cities face).
It’s not complicated what the rate hikes are for. But it does make you wonder if those in charge of spending it really know where the money is coming from — or where it is going.
STORY #5 — Takin’ It To The Streets
Word on the street is that the streets are the focus of law enforcement in trying to make them safer for everyone. Two weeks ago we featured an aggressive and noticeable increase of enforcement as well as education in the VCVU sphere of the city, and that is also taking place in other corners as well.
Nicole Dantzler at WRIC reported that after 30 fatal crashes in 2022, a different approach was needed. Ten of the crashes involved pedestrians in 2022, six more than in 2021.
Acting Major Donald Davenport with the department’s patrol services announced the Roadway Safety Reinforcement campaign back in December alongside Mayor Levar Stoney and the city’s engineer. The goal was to reduce dangerous driving behaviors like speeding, impaired and inattentive driving.
The campaign spanned from Dec. 12 to March 12. Davenport said the number of tickets they issued during the period of Dec. 12 to Feb. 28 went up by 17% compared to the same time last year. The amount of speeding tickets also went up by 29% in that time frame.
“We’re not done,” Davenport added. “It’s not just a 90-day thing and then we move on to something else. The safety of our roadways and our citizens is paramount,” “This is going to continue to evolve. We need to study and learn more about what we learned in the last 90 days and how we can make that even better.”
Lyndon German at the Times-Dispatch spoke with Richmond traffic engineer Michael Sawyer who said the city is taking a comprehensive approach to combat the rise of traffic fatalities.
“It’s not just enforcement, it’s education, it’s engineering, it’s emergency response, it’s looking at driver behavior. We’re fortunate in Richmond to have success in getting resources over the past eight years,” Sawyer said.
Richmond was one of several localities to receive more than $750,000 in federal funds toward addressing such key issues as speed management, installing speed enforcement cameras, lighting, accessibility and high-risk drivers; in addition, we also received almost $9 million from Virginia’s Highway Safety Improvement Program, which will go toward improving one of every 10 intersections in the city with high-visibility crosswalks, better traffic signals, safer pedestrian crossings, and other improvements.
I still contend that installing red light cameras in Richmond could fund the budget for decades (far more than a casino) and also (hopefully) help change driver behavior.
“You know we feel like we’re heading in the right direction,” Sawyer said. “It’s just a matter of being able to deliver on our commitments ... the goal that we’re trying to achieve, which is zero death and serious injury.”
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