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Don’t miss Saturday’s free edition with yet another meals tax fiasco story from City Hall, the story about $345,000 of city money going toward a former top official’s former business partner, and a podcast with the landscape of the candidates running for Richmond mayor.
This evening for your Sunday wind-down, we have two quick stories about:
A look at some hard-hitting questions at the Mayoral Forum on Thursday night hosted by the Richmond Crusade for Voters about the lack of leadership at City Hall, tax rates, and the biggest problem facing the city.
John Burkett’s conversation with Police Chief Edwards who is working to rebuild confidence among the rank and file on the inside and reestablish community trust in neighborhoods to better protect the city (and also earned all five mayoral candidates support).
STORY #1 — “If Elected” Mayoral Promises….
The Richmond Crusade for Voters held a mayoral forum on Thursday night in Jackson Ward and it could mark the emergence of several themes in this campaign. Probably the most stunning was the acknowledgment by all five candidates that the new Mayor will also need a new Chief Administrative Officer in the wake of the constant news of credit card corruption, meals tax mis-billings, social service shortcomings and many other dysfunctional operational issues at City Hall.
All five candidates — 1st District City Councilman Andreas Addison; Danny Avula, former commissioner of the Virginia Department of Social Services; Michelle Mosby, former 9th District City Councilwoman; Maurice Neblett, a community organizer; and Harrison Roday, a nonprofit executive and business owner — all agreed out the gate that their term as Mayor will bring a new one-two punch at the top of City Hall to try and fix and clean up the ongoing mess.
The first question of the night asked by the moderator was, “If elected Mayor will you keep the current Chief Administrative Officer?” All five candidates answered no, which indicates that whomever is elected will seek out a qualified and professional administrator with experience running a municipality.
Question Audio — LISTEN NOW · 0:40
Black Virginia News (BVN) has a great Substack and reported on the forum and did not hold back on the topic.
The current Richmond Chief Administrative Officer, Lincoln Saunders, whose salary is over $300,000, was appointed by current Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney. Saunders had no municipal financial administrative experience before becoming Richmond’s CAO.
The Crusade for Voters asked that question out of the gate first question because of the “ongoing allegations of cronyism, nepotism, procurement violations and improper use of city credit cards” have been in the news for months on end, and hopefully it will set the tone for the rest of the campaign amongst the candidates to commit to coming in and cleaning up the “cesspool of corruption and inefficiency.”
While City Hall always faces challenges, the degree and severity of which we have seen in recent years (ignored by the Mayor) have exploded into the atmosphere since
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