Mayor Wilder, Repeat After Me

I just read the mayor’s Visions Newsletter for this week (http://eservices.ci.richmond.va.us/applications/newsletters/mayor/visions.asp?ArtID=10805).
The mayor is still making excuses for his disastrous decision to try to evict the RPS administration from City Hall a few weeks back. This, in connection with his treatment last week of the School Board committee and its chair, Betsy Carr, leads me to conclude that the mayor still doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand that the citizens of this city do not approve of the way he is acting as mayor.

In the interest of saving your administration, Mayor Wilder, repeat after me:

I am sorry. . .

I was completely wrong in trying to evict the school administration from City Hall after the close of business on a Friday afternoon. . .

In the future, I will try really hard not to make mistakes like this again. . .

I need and welcome the contributions and cooperation of all citizens of the city, including the nine members of the City Council, the nine members of the School Board, the Superintendent of Schools, the City Auditor, the City Assessor, and others.

I really hope you can turn things around Mr. Mayor.

It’s Really Tragic

I take no joy from the poll results published in the TD that show that Mayor Wilder’s approval ratings have gone way down. The poll shows that if the election for mayor were held today only 35% of registered voters would vote to reelect Mr. Wilder. I cannot deny that for the past year I have been constantly berating Mr. Wilder for his performance as this city’s chief executive. But that’s not the way I wish it was.

When Mr. Wilder was elected mayor, I was kind of excited. I thought he would provide the type of leadership that any city could use. I have been greatly disappointed. That is the reason that I have felt compelled to criticize him.

Almost from the day he took the oath of office L. Douglas Wilder has been acting as if he had been anointed instead of elected. He has attempted to purge the leadership of the city to remove anyone who doesn't agree with him. He has not acted like a leader. A leader tries to bring about change by persuading other people to follow and by making compromises if necessary. Mr. Wilder tries to lead by imposing his will, by making unfounded public charges against anybody who tries to be independent. And he has never thought himself to be bound by the law.

I think it is tragic that this man, who has earned a place in history, should destroy his reputation in a few short years. Unfortunately, he will be remembered most for his attempt to evict the School Board from City Hall rather than for the things he accomplished as Governor of the Commonwealth.

Hopefully, Mr. Wilder will use the poll results as a wake-up call. He still has a year before the next election to regain the trust and support of the citizens of Richmond. I wish him well.

Entering City, Proceed At Your Own Risk

It is time to award the Maven’s “most wonderful letter of the day.” This time the letter goes to “Keep the City Out of Our Suburbs,” published in the TD on Friday.

This letter has been making me mad since I read it. I have started writing a response several times, but each time I just get too nasty. You know that I am basically a mild-mannered guy and I don’t want to publish anything that will make people feel bad. So, I will not write all the things I wanted to say to the author of that letter. Instead I will write this greeting:

Thank you for the Christo-Judeo-Islamo-Budist love that your letter shows for the unfortunate people who call this decrepit city home. Of course, if we could, we would all run to your suburban paradise. You are always welcome to visit Richmond either for business or pleasure, even though you see no need to pay for that privilege. If you are considering coming to Richmond, however, please heed this warning.

In River City you may come in contact with people who are neither white nor affluent. So, if you’re gonna come here, be sure to wear a surgical mask and bring lots of hand sanitizer. I wouldn’t want you to get contaminated.

Uncle May I?

When I was a lad, back in Brooklyn, USA, we played a little street game called “Mother May I?” The rules were simple. One kid, the mother, stood on one end of the backyard. The other kids stood on the other end at the starting line. The mother would then give instructions on how they could cross the divide between them. S/he might say, “Fred, you may take one giant step.” Fred could do nothing until he asked, “mother may I?” The kid playing mother would then either say “yes you may,” or “no, you may not.” Fred would act accordingly. Mother then would go through each of the other kids, instructing them to take giant steps, itsy-bitsy steps, umbrella steps (you had to spin as you moved), jumps, hops or whatever. Slowly the group of children would advance across the backyard toward mother. If, however, one of the players advanced without asking “mother may I,” he or she would have to go all the way back to the starting line.

According to the TD, School Board member Betsy Carr and Mayor Wilder have been playing this game (now called Uncle May I) and Ms. Carr is not winning. It seems that Ms. Carr, as chair of a School Board committee, has been working on the Board’s revised plan for new and renovated school buildings. A Thursday TD article indicated that the School Board committee was holding a meeting next Wednesday and had invited city officials and community leaders to provide their input. Ms. Carr stated that “[a]s we’re moving forward for a great city and making the schools best as possible, we need to get everybody thinking their best thoughts of how we can make it work together.”

Ms. Carr’s motive seemed pure and her position seemed reasonable but as indicated in Friday’s TD, Ms. Carr has made a fatal mistake. Before she moved, she failed to ask Mr. Wilder “Uncle May I?” It makes no difference that Ms. Carr “thought the invitation [to city officials] met Wilder’s desire for better communication between various parts of city government.” It makes no difference that this meeting would accomplish a great deal. Ms. Carr did not ask Uncle Doug for his permission and now she must return to the starting line.

It is tragic that Ms. Carr had to learn this lesson the hard way. Of course, it would be a lot easier if our regal chief executive employed a protocol officer to explain to us mortals which hoops we need to jump through to make His Excellency happy. Then Ms. Carr would have known how to proceed without offending the mayor.

As you might expect, Ms. Carr’s failure to ask “Uncle May I” has converted our benevolent Uncle Doug into the vengeful dictator that he sometimes becomes. He has listed new rules for playing the game in the future. King Doug now insists that before he will accept any further communications from the School Board on the issue of school construction or renovation, the School Board and the School Superintendent must carry out the recommendations made last winter in the City Auditor’s audit of Richmond Public Schools. His Excellency has indicated that his support for new or renovated schools will depend on actions taken by school officials to save money. “When you do this, we’ll do that. It’s a quid pro quo situation,” the mayor said.

I am sorry that this had to happen to a hard-working, independent minded public servant like Ms. Carr. Of course, she is the exactly the type of person that King Doug has been trying to drive out of city government since his coronation. If there is one thing His Excellency cannot stand it is someone who doesn’t answer to him. Ms. Carr, welcome to the long list of public officials who have drawn the mayor’s wrath for trying to do the right thing. I wish you the strength and courage to keep up the good fight.

It Ain’t Broke, It’s Just Badly Bent

I really have to object to Bob Rayner’s Op-ed in the TD entitled “If the City Charter's Broken, Let's Fix It -- Starting Now.” Mr. Rayner places the blame for the recent chaos in and around City Hall on our City Charter. Mr. Rayner says,

“One clear perception emerged from the recent chaos: The city charter is profoundly unclear about the relationship between the council and the mayor. And that's a sure recipe for endless, distracting, expensive court battles.
Perhaps it's time for the General Assembly -- which oversees local governments -- to help Richmond write a new charter for itself. The mayor's public stance has eased, at least mildly, giving the City Council an opportunity to press for the creation of a city charter that works. Local legislators should offer their services, publicy or privately.
A fight is inevitable. Better to have it settled by the people's elected reprentatives than by the courts. If the rules don't make sense, write some new ones. The mayor, the City Council, and the region's delegates and senators need to sharpen their pencils.
It's time to lead.”

I wonder whether Mr. Rayner has actually read the Charter. I have, and I don’t see why it needs any changes. The people who drafted this charter were capable lawyers and, although I might have written it better, they clearly stated the relationship between the mayor and the council.

Chapter 4 of the charter deals with the City Council. Section 4.02 says,

“All powers vested in the City shall be exercised by the Council except as otherwise provided in this Charter.”

This sounds pretty clear to me. The City Council has the authority to exercise ALL city powers except when the charter grants those powers to someone else. Now who else might the charter grant powers to? How about the mayor?

Section 5.01 of the charter says,

“The mayor shall be the chief executive officer of the city and shall be responsible for the proper administration of city government.”

Section 5.05 spells out the duties of the mayor. The mayor has the duty to:
1- Attend meetings of the council (or send a delegate authorized to answer questions);
2- Keep the council advised of the financial condition and future needs of the city, and make recommendations when necessary;
3- Oversee preparation of the annual city budget;
4- Perform such duties that the Code of Virginia assigns to chief executive officers of cities or that are assigned to the mayor “by ordinances adopted by the council.” (The mayor is given the power to veto such ordinances subject to override by the council.)
5- Issue regulations necessary to carry out the job of mayor.

I think it is clear that the charter creates a city government with two separate branches--the council and the mayor. The council is granted all powers of the city except those specifically given to the mayor (or his subordinates). The powers given to the mayor are clearly stated. Those powers are not unlimited. Clearly, the charter does not give the mayor the authority to ignore the laws of the Commonwealth or the ordinances of the City of Richmond that he does not agree with

The separation of powers in different branches has been a feature of governments in the Commonwealth since we evicted King George’s royal governor at bayonet point and emblazoned our flag with the words “Sic Semper Tyranis”. Separation of legislative and executive functions also exists in the Government of the United States and, I assume, in the governments of the other forty nine states. There are, of course, governments in the world in which legislative and executive powers are vested in the same person. We generally call those governments dictatorships.

But, argues Mr. Raynor,

“Wilder maintains -- not unreasonably -- that city voters overwhelmingly signaled that they want a strong mayor and that they want him to be that strong mayor.”

I don’t know how Mr. Wilder or Mr. Raynor determined that city voter overwhelmingly favor a “strong” mayor. All that is clear is that city voters approved the charter as written. That charter does not mention a “strong” mayor. It provides for a mayor who possesses only the powers specifically given him. All other powers are vested in the council.

There is chaos and dispute over the relationship between the mayor and the council in the City of Richmond only because the incumbent mayor asserts the authority to ignore the provisions of the charter. Mr. Wilder continues to operate under the charter that he wishes the citizens approved, one that gives him complete power. He refuses to follow the actual charter, which clearly limits the powers of the mayor.

So, Mr. Raynor, there is no need to go running to the wise General Assembly and ask it to fix the problem that we the naive citizens of Richmond have imposed on ourselves. The charter that we adopted is not broken. However, it has been bent by the actions of L. Douglas Wilder. Hopefully, in the next election we’ll choose a mayor who will obey the law.

The River’s Back and Now I Can Wash My Neck

Well, it’s official. Our beloved James River is back. I just drove down Riverside Drive between Huguenot and Pony Pasture and there is water flowing over the Zee dam. When I drove by on Monday, the river was so low that most of the dam was dry with only a trickle of water coming over the spillway.

That the river is back is vitally important to me. Since my identity is intimately tied up with the James, this week’s rain came at just the right time. After all, how would it look if I had to change my name to Dry Gulch Maven, or Rocky Rill Maven? No, I like James River Maven just fine and I’m so happy to have it flowing again.

This brings me to a song that my mother used to sing to me when I was a kid:

“It ain’t gonna rain no more no more,
It ain’t gonna rain no more.
How in the heck can I wash my neck
If it ain’t gonna rain no more?”

Well, much to my maveness’ delight, it has rained and I can start lathering my neck again.

Demand for Payment

"The conclusion then, is, that neither the representatives of a nation, nor the whole nation itself assembled, can validly engage debts beyond what they may pay in their own time." Thomas Jefferson, 1789

Dear American Taxpayer,

We regret to inform you that you that you have been the victim of a major financial scam. You have fallen for the ridiculous assertion that decreasing the federal tax rate will result in increased revenue flowing to the government. Accordingly the candidates you have elected to public office have increased the debt owed by your government to nine trillion, twenty eight billion, nine hundred fifty one million dollars ($9,028,951,000.00).

Until now, we have been willing to let your government pay off its debt in annual payments of nearly two hundred fifty billion dollars ($250,000,000,000). However, over the last six years, your government’s debt has increased at a phenomenal rate and we can no longer protect our stockholder’s interest unless we receive payment immediately.

As the Constitution of your government indicates that it is adopted by “We the People” and because you have benefited from your government’s continued deficit spending we consider it reasonable to hold you responsible for your share of the debt of the United States of America. Your personal liability for this debt is $29,785.35 for each member of your household.

We demand payment of your share of the debt by return mail. Because of the irresponsible credit practices of your government, we cannot accept credit cards in payment. We will accept only cash, money order or certified check in payment.

We regret that we have been forced to take this action. To avoid a similar occurrence in the future, we recommend that your government refrain from spending beyond its means.

Sincerely,
Creditors of United States Government

Nor Any Drop To Drink

Scene I.
I was up in northern Virginia this weekend. In Low-down County (i.e. Loudon) there were signs on almost every street reading “NO OUTDOOR WATERING!” You see, because of the drought, the Loudon Board of Supervisors has imposed mandatory water restrictions.

Scene II.
I was back in Richmond last night. (I can no longer call this place River City, ‘cause there ain’t too much river left.) Yesterday, my neighbor across the street turned on his lawn sprinkler and it ran all night. This morning there was lots of water running off his property and down the street. I read in the TD this morning that Chesterfield County’s mandatory water restrictions go into effect today. The restrictions apparently are rather modest: lawn watering only three days per week; car and patio washing two days per week.

As for other jurisdictions in the neighborhood, the TD reported:
· Colonial Heights is scheduled to consider restrictions in the coming weeks.
· Dinwiddie put mandatory restrictions in place earlier.
· Petersburg officials asked residents to begin observing restrictions. City Council may make those restrictions mandatory at an Oct. 23 meeting.
· Prince George put mandatory restrictions in place earlier.

What about the City of Richmond and Henrico County? Well, if it doesn’t rain in a few weeks, maybe there will be a need for restrictions.

[I started this piece this morning. I put it away for a while. Then I drove across the mostly-rocks James for choir practice. But as I left I noticed that a different neighbor was pouring lots of water onto his lawn. My recollection is that under voluntary restrictions, nobody can water on Mondays. Well, I guess my neighbor volunteered not to comply.]

So, comparing scenes I and II, I started wondering: what is happening in Loudon County that is not happening in Exposed-rocks City? Now I know that Loudon County is really crowded. It’s already what Chesterfield County will look like in a few years—wall to wall houses; hundreds of miles of highways, all of them constantly congested; myriad strip malls trying to serve the needs of far too many people. But is that why they need a total ban on outdoor watering? Perhaps they have had a more severe drought than we. Maybe they have lawns that drink up more water than ours. Or, it could be that their newer water mains leak more than our old ones. And, maybe, just maybe, the Potomac is not as mighty a river as the James.

But suppose there are other reasons—so secret that even the TD can’t find out about them—for there being no need for water restrictions in Richmond.

1- It may be that our gaggle of nine has received classified weather forecasts indicating that over the next twenty days ten inches of rain will fall over the city—one half inch per day. Channels 6 and 12 meteorologists, “Eat your hearts out for missing that.”
2- Maybe the mayor has hired a rain maker, using the emergency procurement provisions of the city charter (which he learned to use when he bought an “emergency” audit for the city assessor last winter). We all know that dark clouds have been hanging over this city for months. The rainmaker can seed those and voila we’ll have lots of rain.
3- On the other hand, maybe we don’t need any rain. Perhaps the city has a secret stash of water. It could be hidden under Uncle Doug’s riverside ranch. (There’s nothing like the sun setting over the James.) Millions of acre-feet of H20, on tap for a thirsty city.

So, citizens of Richmond, consider yourselves lucky that we don’t have a City Council that would panic and impose mandatory restrictions (that my neighbor could not volunteer to ignore). Count your blessings that our beloved legislators would not sacrifice our clean cars and green lawns to make sure there is enough water to drink, for personal hygiene, for cooking, for putting out fires and other nonessentials. And, I’m sure we can add to the name of our beloved river. We can call it the Hidden James.

BTW, I advise that you start hording bottled water.

I'm Sorry

I must apologize to my reader. I realize that you rely on me to educate you on what's going on in Richmond and the world. And I realize that I have written nothing in more than a week. However, it's not really my fault. It's all the fault of Uncle Doug (formerly His Excellency).

As you know, the adventures of Mr. Wilder constitute a good part of what I have been writing about. In a rather blatant attempt to deprive me of writing material, L. Douglas Wilder seems to have changed his spots (or stripes if you prefer tigers to leopards). Suddenly, he is acting reasonably. He's acting like everybody's beloved uncle. So, I have to struggle to find something to write about.

I hope that you, my loyal reader, will understand my dilemma. I will soon reward you with more wisdom.

Atta Way Doug!

I really have to stop criticizing Mayor L. Douglas Wilder. Despite his antagonizing most of the city by evicting the school administration from City Hall, it is clear that Doug knows what it takes to placate the voters. What it takes is for the city to spend four or five millions dollars to build a 73 slip marina on the James River at the site of the Intermediate Terminal. How can any one continue to criticize Mayor Doug when he comes up with plans that are so beneficial to the taxpayers of Richmond? Now you might say that you don’t have a boat and can’t imagine why your tax dollars should be used for a marina. Obviously, you are short sighted.

There are many ways that the mayor’s proposed marina will help the City of Richmond:

1- Those of you who watched the HBO series “The Wire” are fully aware how spending millions of dollars for waterfront development will turn around our public schools and cut our crime rate, just as it did in Baltimore;

2- Doug can lure the school administration out of City Hall by offering them floating headquarters;

3- The mega-yachts that will dock at Richmond will provide lucrative employment for our high school dropouts;

4- Our children can go on school field trips to the marina to see the big sail and power boats that they will never be able to afford;

5- Richmond Public Schools can provide accessible classrooms for our handicapped children since the mayor refuses to spend a cent to make school buildings accessible; and

6- When shots are fired in your neighborhood, you can invite all your neighbors to spend the night safely on your family yacht.

If none of these reasons convince you, then I recommend that you borrow fifty or one hundred thousand dollars to buy a boat. You then can be one of the 73 Richmonders who will directly benefit from the marina.

To Earn More, Ask Your Boss for a Pay Cut!

If you think the title of this post makes no sense, then you’re gonna love “Krugman Ruined a Beautiful Day,” the winner of the maven’s most wonderful letter of the day for October 2, 2007. This letter was written in response to a TD op-ed by Paul Krugman. I don’t remember Krugman’s column, but today’s letter was surely entertaining.

My favorite sentence in today’s letter is “Even students in Econ 101 understand that tax cuts increase the revenue going into the U.S. treasury. This has been proven many times.” Hey, it’s been a long time, but I did take Econ 101 and I never learned this amazing principle. I learned about supply and demand and all that cool stuff that only works in a hypothetical world. But never did my Economics professor have the nerve to suggest to me that lowering taxes increases revenues.

Now, this is becoming crystal clear to me. The more money we want to raise for the United States government, the lower our taxes should be. Over the years my brain has begun to resemble Swiss cheese. However, I still have enough gray matter to extend our letter writer’s theory to its ultimate conclusion. If lower taxes mean higher revenues, then if we eliminate taxes entirely we will maximize the revenues we collect.

How come nobody has thought of this before? Wait, now I remember. Isn’t this what George Herbert Walker Bush called “Voodoo Economics” in 1980? Isn’t this what became known back in those days as Reaganomics? Isn’t this what created huge budget deficits over the past few decades? Aren’t we in mega trillions of dollars of debt because we had presidents who thought you could cut taxes and increase spending at the same time? Despite what our letter writer claims, this inane theory has not been proven; it has been disproved two disastrous times—in 1981 and in 2001—and our great grandchildren will be still be paying off our obscene debt in sixty years.

Open Enrollment + Busses = Segregation

Two weeks ago, I sent a letter to the editor of our beloved Times-Dispatch. I criticized one of the TD’s editorials. The TD chose not to publish my letter. That is no reason why you should be deprived of my wisdom. So here is my letter:

Editor
Richmond Times-Dispatch

I strongly disagree with your September 18 editorial, “More Not Less,” in which you criticized the Richmond School Board for eliminating free transportation for students attending out-of-zone schools. The board was correct in eliminating this costly subsidy. In fact, the board should have gone further and eliminated open-enrollment entirely. Over the years, this policy has contributed to the economic segregation of Richmond Public Schools.

Whatever its original intent, history shows that the open-enrollment policy has been used by middle-class parents to cluster their children into a few Richmond elementary schools. The result has been that many neighborhood schools have been left with high concentrations of poor children. For example, south of the river, middle class parents in Forest Hill, Woodland Heights, Westover Hills, Stratford Hills, and other neighborhoods have used open-enrollment (and free transportation) to enroll their children in Fox, Mary Mumford and Fisher elementary schools. The neighborhood schools, Blackwell, Swansboro and Westover Hills, have been abandoned by these parents. The result of this subsidized movement of students is clear from the latest statistics on free or reduced-cost lunches (an accepted measurement of poverty) appearing on the Richmond Public Schools Website:

Blackwell……………………92% of children
Swansboro…………………..87% of children
Westover Hills………………81% of children

Mary Mumford……………...20% of children
Fox…………………………..22% of children
Fisher………………………..30% of children

The February 2007 audit of Richmond Public Schools indicated that “RPS could achieve a substantial estimated annual cost savings by eliminating out of zone transportation for regular education students.” Since this free transportation also contributes to the further concentration of poverty in many of our neighborhood schools, the School Board was right in eliminating it.

When you write a letter to the editor, you have to be short and sweet. You can’t say everything you want to. So, there were some factors that I did not address in that letter.

First, I know that open-enrollment and free transportation are not the only causes of our economically segregated school system. As I have been pointing out this summer, the main cause of this problem is the perception mostly by middle class parents that Richmond Public Schools cannot give their children a quality education. During the summer I said that parents react to this perception by doing one of three things: 1- enroll their children in private schools; 2- home school their children; or 3- move to the suburbs when their children reach school age. Then I was told that there was a fourth mechanism used by middle class parents. The open enrollment policy and free transportation allowed parents to abandon their local school and put their children in the city’s elite elementary schools—Fisher, Fox and Mumford.

Second, I know that it is not only middle-class parents who use open enrollment. As the articles in the TD have shown, the decision by the School Board not to fund out-of-zone transportation has created hardship for families that are not considered middle class and have taken advantage of open enrollment.

Third, I know that to induce middle class parents to use their neighborhood schools we need to make those schools the best schools in the state and we need to convince parents that in fact their children can get a first rate education in those schools.

Fourth, we’ve got troubles right here in River City. We have a very unhealthy demographic pattern that is the direct result of middle class parents rejecting Richmond Public Schools. It is clear in my neighborhood and I assume it exists in other neighborhoods in Richmond. There are many elders in my neighborhood. They are people who have lived in their homes for a long time. There are also many young couples in the neighborhood. They either have no children or have children who have not yet reached school age. In all the neighborhoods in which I have previously lived there have been a large number of families filling the slot between the old and the young. They were families with children who were attending local schools. In my neighborhood in Richmond there are very few families in this last category. We have a vast demographic abyss. I believe that this pattern bodes ill for the future of Richmond. It will lead to a city inhabited by only the very rich and the very poor.

Since the middle of the summer, almost everybody in the Richmond area has expressed his/her opinion on how to bring Richmond schools to greatness. Unfortunately, most of us have been distracted by recent events at City Hall. Now it is time to stop talking about fixing our schools. We need to take action.

New Civil War in Richmond

On Friday morning I drove up to northern Virginia to visit some relatives and to pray on Yom Kippur with my former congregation. I spent about a day, starting sundown on Friday, fasting, examining my sinful behavior during the last year and asking God to forgive me. I ended up feeling peaceful and refreshed. I drove back to Richmond today bringing that peaceful feeling with me. When I got home I checked two days of unread TD and…

Saturday’s headline “Chaos Erupts at City Hall.” Sunday’s headline “Uncertainty Pervades City Hall Amid Turmoil.” This maven was out of Richmond for only two days and war had erupted. What kind of insanity is going on in our beloved city?

I read the stories. Mr. Doug ordered the Richmond Public School administration to be evicted from City Hall. The police kept the public from attending a School Board meeting. Doug will require City Council member’s personal staff to submit to interviews to keep their jobs. The Circuit Court issued a temporary restraining order preventing the continued eviction of the RPS administration from City Hall.

I looked at the newspapers again. Was this Richmond or was it the capital city of some dictatorship? It all would have made sense if this were a military junta ousting the democratically elected government of some country in South America or Asia or Africa. But this is the City of Richmond, Commonwealth of Virginia, United States of America, in the Twenty First Century. The mayor of this City of Richmond is ousting the administration of this city’s public schools from its offices! The mayor of this city is threatening the jobs of City Council employees! The police department of this city kept the public from attending a meeting of their elected School Board! Hey, I thought we had defeated totalitarianism in the last century. But what is going on in Richmond is real despotism.

When we voted for an elected mayor in Richmond, and when we elected L. Douglas Wilder to be that mayor, we were not giving our approval to a prolonged civil war between Mr. Wilder and the City Council, School Board, School Superintendent, City Tax Assessor and even the City Auditor. In previous postings I have described the many instances in which Mr. Wilder, rather than seeking to bring unity to the City, has used his claimed power to insist on getting his way Each time His Excellency has acted I have wondered how he could possibly do any worse. And yet a few weeks pass and he does something else to crush opposition to his policies in Richmond. Mr. Wilder’s methods can best be described as “divide and defeat.” He makes outrageous accusations against other civil servants to try to crush any independent thinker in the city. Except for the lack of a dress, Mr. Wilder’s behavior is like our beloved J. Edgar Hoover, former tsar of the FBI. If you oppose Mayor Doug, you have to expect that he’ll never rest until he gets you.

So how did we in River City get into this mess? From nearly the day he was sworn in, Mayor Doug has been thumbing his nose at the city’s leadership and at us its citizens. He has engaged in activities of questionable legality. He has been sued by the School Board and by the City Council for trying to usurp their authority. He has threatened the jobs of city employees. He has used his “Vision Newsletter” to attack people in Richmond who are only trying to do their jobs. And during the entire time that Mr. Wilder has been waging his campaign to become the King of Richmond, hardly anybody has spoken out.

But this time, the mayor has extended his attack to the students in our public schools. He has demonstrated that he simply does not care who gets hurt as long as he can have his way. The question now is how long will the parents in this city put up with a man who is willing to risk the future of their children in his continued attempt to be the King of Richmond?

To both my Jewish and non-Jewish neighbors in Richmond I wish a healthy and prosperous year. To the City of Richmond I wish a restoration of peace and tranquility.

Where Have All The Glaciers Gone?

Just one day after instituting the maven’s “most wonderful letter of the day,” I must announce that I am not making the award today. After carefully reading all the letters in the TD this morning, I have concluded that none of them are good enough to merit this high honor. There is one letter that I do need to mention, however.

The letter “Just How Much Global Warning Are We Causing” accuses Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and others of lying when they say that climate change has caused the glaciers in Glacier National Park to melt. The letter indicates that when the author and his wife toured the park in 1998, “[t]he park ranger conducting the tour told us that there have never been any glaciers in Glacier National Park.”

Well this is surely revealing. If there were never any glaciers in the park then it surely is ludicrous to suggest that global warming has melted them.

In the words of the letter’s author, I decided to “set the record straight.” I went to the website of Glacier National Park. I clicked on a short video (http://mms.nps.gov/ram/imr/vglegzbg.mov), which indicated that when the park was formed in 1910 there were about 150 glaciers. When the video was made there were only 27 glaciers left and most of them were shrinking rapidly. The video showed before and after photographs, which even to my aging eyes revealed that where there were once sheets of ice there are now bare rocks or pools of water.

I am glad to report to you that Robert Kennedy, Jr., did not lie to the author of the letter. Despite what a park ranger once told the author there were in fact glaciers in Glacier National Park. Now most of them are gone.

What This City Needs is More Gunfights

My nephew called me this evening and wanted to know whether I had stopped writing. I went on line and saw that, in deed, I hadn’t posted anything in nearly three weeks. To those of you who have been eagerly awaiting some wisdom from me, I apologize. For those of you who couldn’t care less, I assume that you aren’t reading this and to you I have nothing to say.

You people in River City are aware that every day the Times-Dispatch chooses one of its letter writers as “correspondent of the day.” I suppose the award is given to the letter that is best written or deals with the most important issues. Well, to force myself to write more, I am hereby introducing the maven’s “most wonderful letter of the day.” I will choose a letter from the TD that is of the greatest importance and discuss it. Today’s award goes to the letter “Store Manager Made the World Safer.”

Nearly two weeks ago, the Baskins-Robins ice cream store on Forest Hill Avenue was robbed by a man who seemed to be holding a semi-automatic weapon. The store manager, not wanting to be viewed as an easy mark, drew out his own weapon and started firing at the unfortunate robber. Eight shots later, the robber had been hit in the back and in the hand. He fled from the store and was found dying nearby. The weapon the robber used in the robbery turned out to be a BB gun.

Some people suggested that perhaps the store manager had used excess force. Not our winning letter. It states that “[t]he store manager has saved the taxpayers the cost of further prosecution and incarceration. . . If more idiot sociopaths who prey on decent citizens were to be shot in the act of committing crimes—by their intended victims—then perhaps others of their kind would realize that we aren’t going to be intimidated.” The letter then uses the Wild West as a model for our city. “The American frontier was cleaned up, not by courts that were more concerned with the safety and rights of criminals, but by tough-minded lawmen and citizens defending themselves.”

Now you know why I chose this letter as the most wonderful of the day. Its writer has come up with the obvious solution to Richmond’s crime problem—arm everybody. And none of this hidden weapon business. If we’re really serious about dealing with crime the way they did in Dodge or Tombstone, every person in Richmond must be required to carry a hand gun in a holster strapped to their side. There must be no room for doubt that everybody is packing.

This is a great idea for several reasons. First we can save tons of money that we now waste on our criminal justice system. We won’t need the Commonwealth Attorney’s office any more. We also can cut in half the number of judges. Police officers will no longer have to fill out those pesky crime reports. We won’t need trials any more; our criminal justice system will be self-enforcing. When the store clerk sees a teenager shoplifting at the 7 Eleven he can enforce the law with his Glock.

Second, arming everybody will put a quick end to aggressive drivers and road rage. Now, when some idiot cuts you off on I-64 and you bang your head on the sun visor because you have to slam on your brakes, there is no reason to repress that anger. Just take out your Colt and blow the sucker’s head off. You’d be doing the public a favor. A driver like that would surely cause a bad accident and kill some innocents.

Third, packing a powerful weapon would add some excitement to our boring lives. Now if some doofus insults you at the bar at O’Tooles, you can call him out to settle things on Forest Hill Avenue with your Smith & Wesson.

Most important, all these guns will give us a whole new generation of heroes for our kids. We can produce our own Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Ike Clanton and others. Or lawmen like Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson and Matt Dillon. Our children need to have gun-toting idols to look up to.

So, writer of our first “most wonderful letter of the day” I salute you. When your suggestion is implemented, Richmond will undoubtedly become the safest city in America.

They're Back!

The Richmond 26 are back in the news. Since their first call for replacing Richmond’s elected school board with an appointed one met with such overwhelming approval by. . . well, I guess by Mayor Wilder, they repeated it again in a 17 page paper delivered to the City Council and the mayor. Of course, our School Board, charged by law with supervising the schools in Richmond did not receive a copy of the missive. Nor, for that matter, did this maven. Thus, on this matter, just like Will Rogers, I only know what I read in the papers.

Since nobody in Richmond took seriously their proposal to bypass the people in doing away with our elected school board, Richmond’s finest indicated that they were willing to wait for a public referendum on the issue. Of course, by making this concession, the 26 risked that the public might vote to keep the elected board. But, hell, that is the risk of democracy.

As in their first letter, our business elite opined that getting rid of the elected school board is all it would take to fix Richmond Public Schools. The division of authority between the City Council and the School Board guarantees that Richmond schools will fail, assert the 26, although they fail to explain why this same division is working fine in most other school districts in the Commonwealth. As stated in the paper, “This mishmash of accountability violates every tenet of managerial structural efficiency and accountability—and is doomed to failure.”

Of course, I am not a business mogul. I am a mere maven. But, I’m not sure what the mishmash problem is. Our School Board gets funds from federal, state and city sources. It uses this money to operate our public schools. If the board does a bad job managing the money, we, the citizens of Richmond, will hold them accountable at the next election.

Perhaps, the 26 really object to the Constitution of Virginia, which requires that school systems be run by school boards rather than by the legislative authority in each district. The “managerial structural efficiency” they desire would be best served by eliminating school boards entirely and simply having the schools run by city councils or county boards of supervisors. After all, we don’t have police department run by police boards, fire departments run by fire boards, or sanitation departments run by garbage boards. In requiring school boards, our constitution recognizes that education is the most important service provided by government and that a separate body, charged only with running the schools, is necessary. It’s sloppy, perhaps even a mishmash, but that’s the way it works throughout the Commonwealth and the country.

In their epistle, the Richmond 26 set forth ten goals for Richmond Public Schools, which, presumably, an appointed school board will be able to achieve. According to the TD, the goals are

1- a graduation rate of 77 percent by 2012;
2- a rate of 50 percent of entering ninth graders attending two or four year colleges four years from now;
3- increasing average SAT scores, and increasing participation to 60 percent by 2012;
4- improving SOL scores in reading and math, especially in middle school;
5- make Adequate Yearly Progress this year, under the No Child Left Behind law;
6- cut truancy in half by next year;
7- reduce by half the number of weapons-related incidents by 2010;
8- put 50 percent of technology resources into classrooms by 2010;
9- initiate the facilities plan portion of the mayor’s City of the Future plan; and
10- reduce noninstructional per-pupil spending by 2012.

Although these suggested goals are helpful, they don’t tell us how to get closer to fixing our school problems. Not all of them, as written, contain adequate measures of compliance. Further, the 26 have no suggestions on how these goals might be met.

As you know, this maven set forth a five step plan for fixing our schools two weeks ago. And, just this week, Paul Goldman, the man that gave us Doug Wilder, set forth a ten step proposal for improving our schools. See his blog on Channel 12’s Campaign 2008 website.
http://www.decisionvirginia.com/component/option,com_myblog/show,School-Board-Improvements-10-Point-Action-Plan.html/Itemid,130/

Hopefully, more citizens will come forward with their suggestions for fixing our schools. Again, my thanks to the Richmond 26 for bringing the issue of Richmond Public Schools to public debate.

For She’s a Jolly Good County

Years, perhaps decades, ago, while I was sojourning in northern Virginia, the District of Columbia had a sex problem. Well, it wasn’t exactly a sex problem; it really was a problem with too many women selling sex a few short blocks from the White House. (I am not implying that being close to the White House created a good market for these women. I assume it was merely a coincidence.) Anyhow, the newspapers wrote a story about it and the Chief of Police decided that these working women could no longer be tolerated along 14th Street. So, on one glorious night, hundreds of police officers took time off from protecting the city from serious crime and dedicated their efforts to freeing the city from vice. Countless women of the night were arrested and carted off. The next day the police put all the offending women in trucks, drove them across the 14th Street Bridge and released them in Arlington. And for one brief shining moment the District of Columbia had no prostitution problem.

This story popped into my head this morning while I was reading the news on page one of the Times-Dispatch. It wasn’t the story about LandAmerica cutting eleven hundred jobs, which is pretty bad news. It wasn’t the story about speed bumps and traffic circles, which isn’t news at all. It was the headline that read “Hanover boasts lowest poverty rate for its size.” The story was contained in the first paragraph, one sentence long: “New census figures released yesterday listed Hanover County with the lowest poverty rate in the nation among counties of its population.”

At first I was giddy with joy. Our neighbor, only a few miles away, had apparently fixed its poverty problem. This was great news indeed, especially after last week’s depressing cover story in Style Weekly, which suggested that Richmond Public Schools can never succeed because of the city’s high concentration of poverty. Hey, if Hanover County has such a low poverty rate they must be doing something that we can copy in Richmond. So what is it they are doing?

I read the article again. There wasn’t any clear explanation for how Hanover had achieved this great feat. The director of the county’s Department of Social Services was surprised by the low poverty rate. She had expected it to be twice as high. But she did make it clear that this low poverty rate didn’t mean that her job was unneeded. There are “many other residents who can’t make their mortgage, car, and day-care payments without [our] assistance.”

Hey, that’s it! The director of Social Services has been making so many assistance payments to residents of Hanover County that they no longer qualify as poor. Now they are merely strapped for cash. Hanover’s solution is easy. Give money to poor people and they will no longer be poor. Why hadn’t we in Richmond thought of it? How simple! We can eliminate our poverty problem by simply giving out more money.

But, wait! The next paragraph suggests that maybe Hanover didn’t do the obvious. It says that development in Hanover County has concentrated on single-family housing, which attracts married families. As everybody knows poverty is lowest among married families and highest among households headed by single women. (And you thought that the marriage amendment was stupid!) The article quoted a demographer (if you know your classical languages, you may understand what such a person does) as suggesting that Hanover had a lower rate of poverty because it was “family concentrated.”

So now things are making more sense. Hanover has less poverty because it has become unfriendly to the poor. It simply provides them with no affordable housing. They can’t live in Hanover if there is no place for them to live.

But would Hanover County be so Machiavellian? Would it deliberately control its zoning and development processes to exclude affordable housing for the less-affluent? Would government officials act this way in the 21st Century?

Wait! Isn’t this the same Hanover County that has Robert Setliff as the Chair of its county Board of Supervisors? Isn’t Setliff the person who was quoted in last week’s Style as saying that the problems of Richmond’s public schools is “none of [Hanover County’s] business,” and sees no value in regional cooperation? Is it so far-fetched that the leaders of such a county would avoid the problems that come with poverty by making sure that poor people stay in Richmond where they belong? Are they any different than the D.C. police who dealt with prostitution by trying to make it Arlington’s problem?

So, the next time you’re driving north and see a “Welcome to Hanover County” sign be sure to read the fine print that says “unless you’re poor.” Then read the engraving on Hanover’s statue of liberty:

Send us your wealthy and your white,
Your middle class we urge from you to flee,
Your wretched refuse we don’t want,
Keep your homeless and your weak,
Across the Chickahominy they can’t cross.

Choosing the Next Prez: Part II

I was really hoping that this process of picking the best candidate in each party was going to be a dialogue or a trialogue or even a multilogue. However, none of you responded to my first “Choosing the Next Prez” post. So I guess this is going to be a lecture.

Of course, according to the media, both broadcast and print, this is a meaningless exercise. The media have already decided, based almost entirely on how much campaign money has been raised, that only three Democratic candidates—Senators Clinton and Obama, and former Senator Edwards—have any chance of winning their party’s nomination. Among Republicans, the media have decided that only two—former New York City mayor Guiliani and former Massachusetts governor Romney—can win the nomination. (Of course, the media may add an additional Republican if a certain actor who is a former Senator decides to run).

Despite the decision by the media, and despite the fact that I, along with millions of other voters, will never have any say in who our party nominates for president, I will go forward with this analysis.

You and I are hiring the next President of the United States. We have to review the resumes of all the prospective candidates to see who is most qualified. But before we do that we have to consider the job description for the president.

The president is the leader of our country. S/he is also the leader of the Free World (whatever that means). S/he is the Commander in Chief of the military of the United States. Further, the president is the chief executive officer of the Executive Branch of our government. S/he is also our country’s top diplomat. The president also appoints (with the consent of the Senate) all federal judges and the top leadership of all of the departments and agencies of the Executive Branch.

So what kind of experience should we look for in our next president? In what kind of a job would a person demonstrate the kind of talents he or she will need to do the job? The resumes of the candidates show they have filled such jobs as United States Senator, United States Representative, state governor, city mayor, federal cabinet secretary, attorney, college professor, actor, state legislator, state cabinet secretary, minister, business executive, author and military officer. Does any of this experience demonstrate that a particular candidate has the skills and talent to be President of the United States?

The three leading candidates among Democrats are incumbent or former United States Senators. Does being a senator (or representative or state legislator) prepare someone to be president? As we have described the job, almost all of the president’s functions are executive, managerial or diplomatic. Yet, the job of a legislator requires no executive or managerial skills. A legislator drafts legislation, builds coalitions to get that legislation enacted, sits on committees and debates either in committee or on the floor of the legislature. Although serving several years in the Senate or House of Representatives may allow a legislator to develop a great deal of expertise in one or more areas of public policy, it provides that legislator with no executive or managerial experience. Even committee chairs develop only a minimum of leadership skills.

But haven’t senators always been the leading candidates for president. Actually, since the Constitution was amended to provide for popular election of senators, rather than their appointment by state legislatures, only two United States Senators have been elected president. The first, Warren Harding, elected in 1920, will never be considered in the top 50% of presidential quality. He accomplished very little as president and his administration is mostly known for corruption. The second was John Kennedy, elected in 1960. Although Kennedy was a great orator and able to inspire great numbers of Americans, an assassin’s bullet prevents us from judging how good a president he may have been. Based on his less than three years in office, I can say that he was not effective in getting most of his legislative program enacted. He approved the Bay of Pigs invasion then decided to withdraw support when things started going badly. He started the escalation of American presence in Viet Nam. He successfully avoided nuclear war with the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I loved John F. Kennedy; he triggered my life-long fascination with politics. However, I don’t think that being a United States Senator adequately prepared him for being president.

Since Kennedy’s election in 1960, four United States Senators—Goldwater, McGovern, Dole and Kerry—have run for president. All of them have lost. If we look at the men elected for the first time as president since 1960, four have been incumbent or former state governors and two have been incumbent or former Vice Presidents. It seems clear to me that the American electorate favors candidates with executive experience.

So, if we look at all those resumes, which candidates have had executive or managerial experience?

Dennis Kucinich, Democrat………… Mayor, Cleveland, Ohio, 1977-79

Bill Richardson, Democrat……………Governor, New Mexico, 2003-present
Secretary, U.S. Department of Energy, 1998-2001

Rudy Giuliani, Republican…………….Mayor, City of New York, 1994-2001

Mike Huckabee, Republican………..Business executive, 1983-1996

Mitt Romney, Republican…………….Governor, Massachusetts, 2003-2007
Business executive, 1978-84

Sam Brownback……………………………Secretary, Kansas Dept. of Agr., 1986-93

None of the following candidates have listed any executive experience:

Joe Biden, Democrat
Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat
Chris Dodd, Democrat
John Edwards, Democrat
Mike Gravel, Democrat
Barack Obama, Democrat
Duncan Hunter, Republican
John McCain, Republican
Ron Paul, Republican
Tom Tancredo, Republican

If I were the H.R. director for any corporation looking for a Chief Executive Officer, I would have to reject the applications of Democrats Biden, Clinton, Dodd, Edwards, Gravel and Obama, and Republicans Hunter, McCain, Paul and Tancredo (and the actor if he gets into the race). None of them have the executive experience we are looking for.

(Of course, experience isn’t everything. One man, who was a lawyer and whose only public service was a term in the Illinois legislature and a term in the House of Representatives, was elected our sixteenth president. He did a pretty decent job I am told).

(Part III to follow soon).

Richmond’s Invisibles

I am writing this from Emerald Isle, N.C. The weather is beautiful and the ocean is warm. We left Richmond this morning after sleeping at the Holiday Inn on North Boulevard. We had to stay there because our power was still out from Thursday night’s storms. Some day I will find out how it is that our house and the one directly across the alley are the only ones that lose power when the lightening strikes and the strong winds blow. So while most of my neighbors were enjoying a normal Thursday night and Friday, we had to throw out the spoiling food in our refrigerator and find a cool spot to spend Friday night.

Before we checked out of the hotel this morning, I had to drive back home to pick up a few things we had forgotten to pack for our beach trip. As I drove south on Boulevard there were scores of people, mostly women, running. As I passed the Greyhound depot, I noticed a person sleeping on the ground, his head leaning against a light pole. As I started up the bridge over the railroad tracks, there was another person, of undeterminable gender, also sleeping on the sidewalk. I was struck by the contrast between these two homeless people and the many runners going both north and south on Boulevard.

When I returned from my brief trip to south of the James, there were even more people running along Boulevard. I noticed, that as they neared the spots where the homeless people were located, they continued their run as if the two were not even there. I got the feeling that to the runners these two human beings were merely part of the scenery, not people.

It is sad that two of our fellow citizens have reached such a low point in their lives that they have to live out on the street. It is shameful that we can go on with our lives all around them without even noticing that they exist.

Fix Our Schools, Now

The 26 business leaders who wrote to the Mayor and City Council last week asserted that the condition of Richmond Public Schools is “an emergency situation that must be dealt with immediately and with bold action.” The Richmond 26 looked at three statistics in reaching their conclusion. They did not mention several things that provide a more accurate portrayal of the condition of RPS. As I indicated in a previous post, School Board Chair George Braxton has stated this with respect to this year’s RPS graduating class:

“Class of 2007 Statistics (As of June 30, 2007)
Continuing Education Plans
Four Year College - 48.7%
Two Year College - 24.5%
Military - 1.3%
Work Force - 19.6%
Apprenticeship - 1.8%
Voc./Technical Training - 3.8%
TOTAL 99.7%

Students in the Class of 2007 have been accepted into 127 colleges & universities. The states represented in the acceptances are Alabama, New York, Massachusetts, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Maryland, Pennsylvania, California, Georgia, Indiana, Tennessee, Texas, Ohio, Washington, D.C. and of course, Virginia. To date over 860 acceptances have been recorded.”

Moreover, Mr. Braxton’s State of the Schools address this past winter indicated that in the past five years RPS has gone from five accredited schools to forty five, an increase of 800%. Further, the number of schools that meet the federal “Annual Yearly Progress” requirements has gone from twelve to forty, an increase of over 300%.

The condition of Richmond Public Schools is, in my opinion, closer to Superintendent Jewell-Sherman’s “Moving from good to great,” than the “emergency” the Richmond 26 have alluded to. However, the City of Richmond needs a world-class school system, not a good one. And we need it now. Planning for improvements to arrive over the next five to ten years will have no benefit on the thousands of children entering or returning to school next month. Therefore, we need to deal with Richmond Public Schools as if there were an emergency.

In my last post, I explained why I didn’t think that switching from an elected to an appointed school board is the solution to Richmond Public School’s problems. Nor do I think that the Superintendent’s so-called 2015 plan will be sufficient or soon enough to be the answer. We need to take action now.

We need the following:

1- Attitude: Everybody in the City, starting with the mayor, members of the City Council, members of the School Board, the Superintendent of Schools, the Richmond Public Schools administration, school principals, teachers, custodians, cafeteria workers, and citizens must deal with the schools as if each action or decision they make affects the future of their own children or grandchildren. I don’t know how many members of the City Council, School Board or RPS administrators at headquarters or in the schools have children or grandchildren in the schools. However, if we are going to make the changes we need to make, everybody must abandon their personal agendas and concentrate only on what is best for our (not somebody else’s) children.

2- Demand Excellence: The Virginia 26 suggests that some of our children “begin their education destined to fail.” Other people, including members of the School Board, have stated that many children in RPS cannot handle a more rigorous curriculum. I say that we must abandon this attitude. We must set standards for all our students that push them to achieve the maximum of which they are capable. We must not be satisfied with SOL accreditation or passing federal yearly progress requirements. These are only based on students “passing.” We must demand, not that our students pass, but that they excel. At the beginning of every school year we must expect that every student in our school system will achieve A’s, not just C’s.

We must engage in best-practices studies to see what is working in other school systems. We must adopt those educational theories that have produced outstanding student achievement in other school systems.

3- Teachers: We must hold all teachers accountable for their students’ achievements. We must have a performance appraisal system that measures how effectively our teachers teach. We must do a regular evaluation of each teacher’s students to see how many are truly excelling. We must not accept as an explanation that “I used the same lessons last year and it worked with those students.” Although ultimately it is the student that learns, we must expect our teachers to prepare lessons that will enable each of their students to perform at their maximum capacity.

We must retrain all our teachers in new teaching methods. There have been many improvements in teaching methodology in recent years and we must make these developments available to all our teachers. We should not settle merely for teachers to be recertified periodically. We must insist that they constantly improve. Since many of our students are at risk because of their background, we must make sure that all our teachers know how to help these children.

4- Budgeting: I was disappointed this year that the School Board did not prepare a budget from scratch. Instead it took last year’s budget and tweaked it a bit. As taxpayers, who already pay much more in real estate taxes than our neighbors in the counties, we must demand that all unnecessary spending be removed from Richmond Public School’s budget. To do this I suggest that we adopt some form of zero-based budgeting. Under this concept, each office or program in Richmond Public Schools would have to come forward periodically and justify its continued existence. At least once every two years each department head must prepare budget justifications explaining in detail how the funds it received last year were spent and how this benefited the students in our schools. At the same time they would have to justify continued funding for that program in the next budget year. Based on these justifications, we would expect the School Board to allocate funding in the budget only to those departments or programs that are working. We would also expect the School Board to reduce staffing in those areas which currently are overstaffed.

5- Accountability: We are entrusting many people with the safety and future of our children. We must hold these people strictly accountable for their performance. If members of the City Council are irresponsible in their oversight and funding of the schools, we as citizens should vote them out at the next election. If members of the School Board are not demanding excellence from students, teachers and administrators, or if they are not adequately controlling the school budget, we citizens should vote them out at the next election. If the Superintendent of Schools is not effectively and rapidly steering Richmond Public Schools toward greatness, we should insist that the School Board replace her. If teachers are not teaching their students, we should demand that their performance improve or that they be replaced. Every person who has authority to spend school funds must be held strictly accountable for the money they spend.

The children of Richmond deserve a world-class education. We taxpayers deserve great schools for the money we pay. We and our children can settle for no less. We must demand that our elected and appointed public servants fix Richmond Public Schools now!

Appointed School Board: Should We Go Back?

The highest nabobs of the Richmond area’s high nabobs have written to the mayor and council suggesting that we go back to an appointed school board. They call the state of Richmond Public Schools an “emergency” and say that only by eliminating our elected school board can the schools be saved. Richmond Times-Dispatch reporter Michael Martz described the letter from our best and brightest as having landed at City Hall “like a bomb.” As I might have expected, His Excellency hailed the letter (might he have been an unrevealed co-author?) Eliminating our elected school board would eliminate all those pesky members who have the audacity to think for themselves. City Council Prez Bill Pantele thought it was a good idea to revisit the issue of elected school boards. School Board Chair George Braxton said that the people must decide.

The letter, signed by 26 of the Richmond Metro Area business leaders, asserts that everything in the City of Richmond is great, with the exception of the public schools. It is the state of our public schools that is keeping Richmond from becoming a world-class place to work and live. The letter repeats the mayor’s assertion that Richmond’s schools are the most expensive and least effective of any in the Commonwealth. The Richmond 26 go on to list the problems of Richmond Public Schools: Richmond spends more per student than do other school districts and a smaller percentage of it goes to instruction; Richmond has the lowest graduation rate of any local school district except Petersburg; Richmond schools have a higher number of “serious incidences” of student behavior than the other jurisdictions.

So far, I have no problem with the letter. I too believe that Richmond can never be a great city unless it has a great school system. Although RPS has made significant progress in recent years, we still do not have the quality of schools that we need. Richmond Public Schools must be so good that residents of the surrounding counties move into the City to get a better education for their children.

Where I have problems with the Richmond 26 is their conclusion that all of the problems of Richmond Public Schools are the fault of the city having an elected school board. Our 26 elite conclude that the wonderful teachers of this city “will not succeed under the management and administration of the current Richmond School Board.” Richmond’s best and brightest provide no support for this assertion. They apparently think it self-evident that the elected school board is the cause of all of RPS’s problems.

In the Commonwealth, our local schools are run by school boards. Further, in every county and city in Virginia it is the city council or board of supervisors, not the school board, that has taxing authority. So, in every jurisdiction in Virginia there is a separation of the taxing authority from the authority to supervise the schools. In every jurisdiction, not only in Richmond, school boards propose budgets but have no control over raising revenue. In every jurisdiction, not only in Richmond, the local legislative body has authority to levy taxes for schools but has no direct control over operation of the schools.

In 1992 the General Assembly granted to the voters in Commonwealth school districts the right to opt for elected, rather than appointed, school boards. The citizens of the City of Richmond chose to elect their school board members. So did the citizens of most other jurisdictions in Virginia, including the seven school districts that the Richmond 26 has chosen to compare with Richmond. According to the letter these other jurisdictions have successful school systems. So, apparently, in other school districts the elected school board has worked fine. However, our 26 leaders have assigned the sole responsibility for the condition of Richmond Public Schools to the elected school board.

So, is it the school board that creates the three problems set forth in the letter? It is true that Richmond Public Schools spends more per student than other jurisdictions. I assume that it is also true that RPS spends a smaller percentage of its budget on instruction than do other jurisdictions. But, is this the fault of the elected school board? No. RPS has these budgetary realities because it has a much higher percentage of at-risk students than do other school districts in Virginia. Many Richmond students have special needs that require RPS to provide services, not directly related to instruction, that many other school jurisdictions do not have to provide. Any school board, whether elected or appointed, will have to budget for these services. Further, we need keep in mind that many of these services are mandated by the federal government and are paid for with federal funding.

If the graduation rate is defined as the percentage of students entering the ninth grade that graduate from high school four years later, Richmond has a lower graduation rate than do the other jurisdictions. Is this caused by our elected school board? No. School Board Chair Braxton has indicated that there are many reasons why Richmond students do not graduate in four years. Some must drop out to find jobs to help support their families; some opt to get a GED rather than continue in school; some take longer than four years to graduate; some are incarcerated during their high school years; some have to drop out or delay their graduation because they are pregnant. All of these causes for a student’s inability to graduate in four years are beyond the control of any school board.

What about violence in schools? Before comparing jurisdictions, we must be sure that each jurisdiction has the same definition of “serious incidents.” We also need to know whether each jurisdiction places the same emphasis on reporting these incidents. I can envision some schools where faculty and staff are not encouraged to report many of these incidents because it makes the school look bad. But even if the statistics from the various jurisdictions are comparable, can we assign the responsibility for school violence on the school board? Our children spend a greater proportion of their lives out of school than they do in school. Many come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and live in neighborhoods where an aggressive attitude is necessary for survival. As the letter recognizes, we must provide social services and public health services, in addition to a quality education to “significantly improve the lives of students who now begin their education destined to failure.”

Of course there is room for improvement, but the Richmond 26 have given no reason that an appointed school board is better equipped than our elected one to make the needed changes. By concentrating on eliminating our elected school board and replacing it with a school board of elites chosen by elites, the business leaders ignore a major cause for what they see as an “emergency” in Richmond Public Schools. From the time that Richmond elected its new mayor, the School Board has had to devote far too much of its time and energy defending itself from a hostile City Hall. It is very hard to do much to fix the problems with the schools if you constantly have to deal with withheld money, lawsuits, threats of eviction from city offices, and other hardships that the school board has had to deal with. Perhaps it is our elected mayor that should bear some of the responsibility for our schools not improving quickly enough.

In Richmond, we have the right to vote for President of the United States; we can vote for United States Senator and Representative; we elect the Governor of the Commonwealth; we vote for Virginia Senator and Delegate; we elect the members of our City Council; and, only three years ago we decided that we wanted to have an elected mayor. Now, the Richmond 26 wants to take away from us the right to elect the members of our school board. And, they want to do it not by the method set forth in law (petition and voting by Richmond residents) but by a request to the General Assembly that it amend Richmond’s charter. For some reason, these business leaders don’t think that we residents of Richmond are smart enough to elect school board representatives. They don’t even think we are smart enough to decide whether we should keep our elected school board. They just want to take that right away from us by legislative fiat. Residents of Richmond must reject their proposal.

I welcome the interest in Richmond Public Schools demonstrated by these 26 leaders. Considering that many of them have chosen not to live in the City of Richmond, are therefore not Richmond taxpayers, and probably don’t have any children or grandchildren attending Richmond Public Schools, or planning to attend in the future, I think they should be commended for their offer of assistance to the mayor and city council in fixing our schools. They say they are “eager and willing” to work in “a positive, productive, and candid partnership” with school leadership to “bring the Richmond Public Schools and the City of Richmond to the world-class level of which it is capable.” I hope that they and the organizations that they lead will enter into working partnerships with Richmond Public Schools. We residents are entitled to the best schools in the country.

Okay, Let’s Talk About Schools (Part I)

The rather emotional responses to my post “Shrinking Richmond” (click on “Comments”) tells me that we are dealing with an issue that is very sensitive in Richmond. The subject of Richmond Public Schools involves issues of taxes, race, and economic class that are difficult to discuss without possibly offending someone. Perhaps the fear of offending is the reason that we only deal with this issue at its perimeters. I think we need to get to the heart of the matter.

I am a great supporter of public schools. They are the basis of our American democracy. I was poor as a child and, without the quality public-school education I received in New York, I would not have achieved anything. All three of my children also benefited from a quality public-school education here in Virginia.

In the nearly three years I have lived in Richmond, I have noticed a very strange demographic pattern. About half the people in my neighborhood are empty-nesters like my wife and me. Most of the rest of my neighbors are young couples, either without children or with pre-school-age children. When children in my neighborhood reach school age, their parents do one of three things: 1- they move out of Richmond to Chesterfield, Henrico or Hanover counties; 2- they send their children to private school; or 3- they home-school their children. I think that the only children who attend public school are those whose parents cannot afford any of the other options.

Two days each week, I tutor at Westover Hills School. In the classes I work in, all the children are African-American. In fact, almost all of the children in the school are African-American. I have looked at the statistics on the Richmond City Public Schools website, and I find that in most of Richmond's public schools African-Americans constitute 80% or more of the student body. My experience, and those statistics, indicates to me that although more than thirty years have passed since the end of "massive resistance," Richmond still has segregated schools. This segregation is not the result of the law but of the perception by those parents who can afford other options that their children cannot receive a quality education in Richmond public schools.

What I find particularly troubling with regard to Richmond's segregated schools is that no one seems to talk about them. I hear a lot of talk about building new school buildings or how many children are passing SOLs. But nobody talks about whether children can get a quality education in segregated schools. Nobody talks about how to overcome the perception by middle class parents that keeps them from sending their children to Richmond public schools.

So where does this perception that Richmond has low quality schools come from? We could start with His Excellency Mayor Doug. In his ongoing vendetta against the School Board and the Superintendent of Schools, Mr. Wilder is continuously issuing vision newsletters indicating that Richmond Public Schools are inferior to those in the surrounding counties. In his newsletter for July 9, for example, Mr. Wilder says:

With a dismal, worst-in-Virginia graduation rate – only 47% of our children make it all the way through high school – there is plenty to be concerned about.
* * *
Today, if our students are ill-educated and ill-prepared to enter the world beyond secondary school, we cannot blame it on a lack of money. Richmond Public Schools spends almost 60 percent more per student annually than any of the surrounding jurisdictions, while lagging far behind in critical measures of student achievement.
* * *
Richmond's dropout rate in 2005 was four times that of Hanover and almost twice that of Chesterfield and Henrico. In fact, of school systems with 10,000 or more students, Richmond had the highest dropout rate statewide.

How can anyone in the City have any confidence in RPS with a cheerleader like Mayor Doug? Mr. Wilder’s statements are equivalent to the CEO of Coca Cola advising customers to drink Pepsi because it tastes better. Is it any wonder that families leave the city looking for better schools?

In addition to our cheerleader-in-chief, advertising by the counties and real estate listings support the idea that the counties have better schools. The listing for sale of a house in the counties will almost always include “near to high-quality Chesterfield (Henrico, Hanover) schools.” Have you ever seen a listing for a house in the city that mentions that there is a nearby school?

Anonymous, one of those who commented on my earlier post (not to be confused with anonymous and anonymous, who also commented), takes issue with the idea that Richmond Public Schools are inferior. He attended public school in Richmond from kindergarten through high school. He says,

I know so many graduates who are becoming teachers, lawyers, doctors, engineers, scientists, and many are in school getting graduate degrees from great schools.

Anonymous himself is planning to go to law school.

So, who is correct? Is it Anonymous, who has been through RPS and knows that many of his fellow graduates are very successful? Or is it Mr. Wilder, who asserts that Richmond’s students are ill-educated and ill-prepared to deal with the world.

When asked about the mayor’s vision newsletter, School Board Chair George Braxton acknowledged that less than half of students who enter the 9th grade graduate from high school four years later.

Some earn a GED, some are held back a year sometime during their high school career, some are incarcerated, and some drop out (reasons range from working to pregnancy). We can work on much of this, but a great amount of it comes from the social problems faced when a large percentage of your costumers are at-risk.

Mr. Braxton also provided the following statistics concerning the 2007 graduating class:

Class of 2007 Statistics (As of June 30, 2007)
Continuing Education Plans
Four Year College - 48.7%
Two Year College - 24.5%
Military - 1.3%
Work Force - 19.6%
Apprenticeship - 1.8%
Voc./Technical Training - 3.8%
TOTAL 99.7%

Students in the Class of 2007 have been accepted into 127 colleges & universities. The states represented in the acceptances are Alabama, New York, Massachusetts, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Maryland, Pennsylvania, California, Georgia, Indiana, Tennessee, Texas, Ohio, Washington, D.C. and of course, Virginia. To date over 860 acceptances have been recorded.

Because Richmond has so many students who are at-risk, it is very difficult to compare our schools to those in the counties. We spend more because these students have greater needs than do middle class students. Many of our students do not succeed because of the problems they face at home and in their neighborhoods.

On the other hand, Anonymous’ experiences are consistent with the statistics about graduating students. More than 70% of this year’s graduating class plans to attend four year or two year colleges. Despite Mr. Wilder’s assertion that our students are ill-educated, they are being accepted at colleges throughout the country.

I intend to continue this discussion of Richmond Public Schools until I am satisfied we have fully addressed all the issues. I hope you join me by clicking on the word “comments” below. (If you don’t want to reveal your identity, please use an alias. We already have too many people named Anonymous.)

Should Taxpayers Pay Tech Victims?

I think the shootings at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007, were horrific. That so many families should lose their children, spouses, siblings or parents all at once is beyond terrible. I can only imagine how I would feel if a disaster like that affected my family. I empathize with all those whose lives will always be partly empty because of the loss of their loved ones.

Yet, I am troubled by the lead article in the Times-Dispatch of July 30, 2007, indicating that Virginia legislators are advocating that the Commonwealth compensate survivors and families of victims for their losses at Tech. These legislators are not advocating that they themselves pay the compensation but that the taxpayers of the Commonwealth pay it. I ask, “Why?”

Life is dangerous. Bad things happen to people. And, when bad things happen, the victims or their survivors want to be compensated. But, should Virginia, or any other state, compensate every victim of a loss?

Over the centuries, the Anglo-American legal system has developed an entire body of tort law to deal with personal loss. Under that system, it is the person who causes the loss, not the state, that is required to compensate the victim for the loss. And, that person is only required to pay compensation when the actions causing the loss were negligent or otherwise wrongful. The devastation of April 16 was caused by Seung-Hui Cho, not by the taxpayers of Virginia.

The shootings at Virginia Tech were not unique in our history. Similar mass-killings have taken place in other schools or buildings in the past. They will continue to occur in the future so long as we hold dear the right of Americans to purchase 9mm semiautomatic handguns and other killing machines. These occasional deaths are the price we pay for the right to bear arms.

Governor Kaine appointed a panel to investigate the events of April 16. That panel has not yet issued its findings. If the findings, when issued, indicate that the negligent or wrongful actions of some officer or employee of the Commonwealth were a contributing cause of the shootings, it would be proper to consider reaching monetary settlements with victims and survivors to obviate the need for expensive and protracted lawsuits. However, to appropriate public funds for compensation, without any showing that the Commonwealth or its officers or employees caused the shootings, would put the taxpayers of Virginia in the position of insurers. Should we take money from other badly needed programs, or increase taxes, to pay for this proposed compensation? I'm not sure.

Michael Vick: Why Should I Care?

It's so easy being a maven when you deal with the Times-Dispatch. As I predicted yesterday, the TD devoted all five columns on the front page today to the Vick story. And, I was wrong. Vick went to court today, not yesterday. So, we may very well see the main story tomorrow being about Mr. Vick.

I am trying to understand. Mr. Vick is an athlete. He comes from Virginia and played college football in Virginia. He now works in Atlanta. I cannot figure out the TD. Why is this such big news? There were at least a dozen events that happened yesterday that are far more relevant to our lives than Mr. Vicks troubles. Why didn't they make front page news?

Should I be sorry for Michael Vick? Should I have been in front of the court house protesting against dog fighting?

I have a confession to make. I don't care what happens to Michael Vick. I just want this to be over so I can find out what is actually happening in the world.

Hey, I Pay for this Rag

Somebody at our beloved Times-Dispatch has lost touch with reality. I don't know if it's the publisher or one of the vice presidents or the editor, but nobody seems to understand what the word "news" means.

Every day it's there on the front page of the main section. Another story about Michael Vick. And I know it will probably be a five-column headline tomorrow, because Mr. Vick is going to court this afternoon.

I realize that Richmond is not Metropolis and that the TD is not the Daily Planet. I also know we don't have journalists like Perry White, Lois Lane and Clark Kent. But even a cute little city like Richmond deserves a quality daily newspaper. Unfortunately, the TD doesn't seem to be it.

Every morning I read the TD. It takes me about ten minutes. Then I have to read my wife's Washington Post so I can find out what's actually going on in the world, the US of A, and the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Common Greater Richmonders. We have to stop putting up with this publication that has the audacity to call itself "Virginia's Newsleader."

A Hard Rain is Gonna Fall

Things are getting ominous. Style Weekly has bumped His Excellency out of the number one spot as the most powerful person in Richmond.

I can't see King Doug taking this lying down. He's got to do something to get back to number one.

Any ideas on what he'll do?

Shrinking Richmond: Goodbye to Don and Clara

We met the Thompsons when we moved to Richmond three years ago. They are a great couple. They have two kids; Eric aged 5 and Danielle aged 3. In our neighborhood, where the population is split between empty-nesters and young couples with pre-school age children, the Thompsons are one of the few younger families that I and my maven-ess have been able to be friends with. Usually, it’s hard for younger and older families to find much in common. But it’s been different with Don and Clara.

Well, the bad news appeared last month with a “for sale” sign in front of the Thompsons’ house. I waited until Clara brought the kids home from daycare, and then ran to knock on their door.

“Clara, are you guys, moving?”

“Yes.” Clara didn’t look me in the eye. It was clear she wasn’t happy about this.

“But why and where are you going?”

“We found a place out in Chesterfield County, west of where Hull Street Road crosses 288. We’re moving ‘cause Eric is starting school in the fall.”

“Okay, Eric is starting school in the fall. What does that have to do with your moving? There’s a public school three blocks from here. Besides, I thought you loved this neighborhood.”

“We do love this neighborhood. And we love you and our other neighbors, but we want Eric to go to a good school. Everybody knows the schools in Chesterfield are better than the city schools.”

As we spoke, Don drove up and got out of his car.

“What do you mean, everybody knows? How does everybody know the schools are better in Chesterfield?

Don joined the conversation. “We don’t think that Eric would fit in in the city school; he would be different from everybody else.”

“Is this a racial thing?” I asked.

“No! We are not racists! It’s just that so many kids in that school are poor. They don’t have the academic skills that Eric has. He will be pulled down by them.”

“Have you ever been in the school? I volunteer there. Believe me; those children are getting a good education. They have great teachers. Eric would do fine there.”

“We’re not willing to risk Eric’s future on an experiment. We know the schools are better in Chesterfield. If he goes to city schools he might have trouble getting into a good college.”

“He’s not even six years old,” I said. Then I added. “You realize you’ll be giving up a ten-minute commute to work. And you’ll have to pay tolls on the Powhite.”

“Hey!” He said. “These are our children. If I have to have a longer commute or pay tolls so that Eric can go to a quality school, I’ll do it. Besides, maybe I can find a better job in the county.”

It was clear I was not going to win this argument. Don and Clara were going to move.



You know, some day academics are going to be studying the Henrico-Chesterfield metro area. One will ask the other about the large vacant space in the middle of the area. “Didn’t the City of Richmond used to be here?” “Yes,” the other will reply, “but it was abandoned years ago.” “But why?” the first one will ask. The second will reply—

“It was the schools, dummy!”

Why do we pay more in Richmond?

In Michael Paul William’s column in the July 23 TD he discusses whether it is better to live in Mechanicsville or Glen Allen (notice that the City of Richmond was not even discussed.) Williams refers to the article in Money magazine that lists Mechanicsville 54th best and Glen Allen 66th best among places with between 7500 and 50,000 residents. Williams indicates that the magazine lists the median home price for Mechanicsville at $267,969 while its average real estate taxes were $1624. For Glen Allen the figures were $235,885 and $2055.

It’s been years since I learned arithmetic, but it seemed to me that these figures must be wrong. The homes in Mechanicsville were costlier, but the real estate tax in Glen Allen was higher. I was sure that either Mr. Williams or the magazine must have made an error. Then it hit me. These places are in different counties and therefore they have different real estate tax rates.

So, I went to my friendly Internet to see what the tax rates were for Richmond and its nearby bedrooms. Now, some of the websites have 2006-07 rates and some have 2007-08 rates, so these figures may not exactly match. However, here’s what I found out—
City of Richmond: $1.23 per $100 of assessed value
Chesterfield County: $1.02 per $100 of assessed value (going to .97 at the end of this year)
Hanover County: $0.81 per $100 of assessed value
Henrico County: $0.87 per $100 of assessed value

So what does all this mean? If my house is assessed at $250,000 (which I wish it was), I would pay the following amount of annual real estate taxes in the various jurisdictions:
City of Richmond: $3,075
Chesterfield County: $2,550
Hanover County: $2,025
Henrico County: $2,175
Well, I live in the City of Richmond. So, I am paying between $500 and $1,000 more in real estate taxes than if my house were in the surrounding counties. (These figures do not include various miscellaneous fees that I also pay to the City of Richmond.)

So, why do I pay so much more for local government than do some of my friends? Obviously, I must pay more because I get more. I must get better schools, better maintenance of streets and other infrastructure, more police and fire protection, better libraries, etc. and etc. It’s like the old Yuban commercial (if you’re under 40, you probably never heard of it), “You get what you pay for!”

I'm a newcomer to Richmond (been here less than 37 years) so I'm not sure, but I suspect that more or better services is not the reason I pay more.

In a July 10 TD OpEd, 1st District Councilperson Bruce Tyler gave his reason for why I pay more:
“Richmond is fortunate to be the capital of Virginia. With this blessing comes the hidden burden of providing essentially free police, fire, and infrastructure to state government. Richmond taxes are higher than taxes in surrounding localities because they don't share this burden; therefore, we are less competitive.”

Tyler presents an interesting issue. Commonwealth-owned buildings in the city do not generate any tax revenue. Shouldn't the Commonwealth compensate the city for this lost revenue by means of an annual payment in lieu of taxes? I know that the Federal Government pays the District of Columbia a substantial annual payment to compensate for the revenue the District loses because the Feds pay no taxes. But, does any state government compensate its capital city for lost tax revenue?

In my opinion, making up for the revenue lost because the Commonwealth does not pay taxes can only account for a small part of the extra taxes we Richmonders (Richmondites?) pay each year.

As you all know, our beloved mayor, Doug Wilder, gives another reason for our high real estate taxes. In his Vision newsletter for January 22, 2007, His Lordship said,
“I do not believe that our citizens desire for their real estate assessments to continue to rise in order to support the exorbitant spending by our public school system, which maintains too many half-empty school buildings at a cost of millions each year.”

Well, Mr. Your Honor, I cannot believe that I pay higher taxes in the city simply because RPS has some half-empty buildings. Only about one quarter of the City’s operating budget goes for schools. (http://www.ci.richmond.va.us/departments/budget/pdf/PieChartTotalExp.pdf) Is it just possible that there is some waste in the rest of the City government--the part that you are responsible for?

So, here is my question to Mayor Wilder. Here is my question to the nine members of the City Council. Why do we pay more for municipal services than do our neighbors in Hanover, Henrico and Chesterfield counties?