Buttermilk & Molasses

Ah, Power. It's So Damned Ephemeral, Isn't It, Gene?

Was it only a year ago that VCU President Eugene Trani could bask in the warm glow of the top pedestal in Style Weekly's annual Power List? And was it just yesterday that Style's new list emerged with Trani slipping several notches to fourth on the docket?

I think the power elevator just dropped another floor, thanks to the invisible power of tenured faculty with friends in higher places:

Virginia Commonwealth University's board of visitors next month will take up allegations that the university unfairly conducted its investigation into the awarding of a degree to Richmond's former police chief.

"It will definitely be discussed," VCU rector Thomas Rosenthal said of the allegations, which were contained in letters written by two of four officials whose resignations were announced Tuesday.

Tim Kaine had better make some phone calls now if he really wants that office on Frankin Street.

The Big Shake-Up on Style's Power List (Can you say Catrow and Murden?)

Here's a hint -- the Internet is more powerful. Doug Wilder, not so much.

That's an early look at Style Weekly's 5th annual Power List, which adds a few of our favorite faces to its running tally of people who move and shake our fair city in some of the right places.

Hello, then, to our favorite TD columnist (And maybe the only one left!), Michael Paul Williams; to the urban planner everyone loves to hate, Rachel Flynn; and to the founder of Richmond's Internet and his third cousin, iCommunity -- that'd be RVABlogs' Ross Catrow and his digital brotha John Murden. Those are a few of the new names on Style's radar, unveiled in the weekly's July 23 issue (out now, dwindling fast). There are 17 new faces on the list, including the four above.

And to think, we knew them all when.

But if the new faces aren't enough to get you excited, take a gander at the new Top 10 from the list. Bet you don't have Sunday brunch with these folks; in fact, going a step further, bet you probably wouldn't care to.

1. Richmond's piggybank, Bill Goodwin
2. Dominion Powers' head lightbulb Thomas Ferrell
3. Philip Morris' chief cigarette Michael Szymanczyk
4. VCU President and real estate mogul Eugene Trani
5. Virginia's Govenor Tim Kaine
6. Former grocer/civic booster James Ukrop
7. Philanthropist Stanley Pauley
8. Jim Gilmore's favorite boosters, the Gottwald Family
9. Outgoing Richmond Mayor, the former Governor Right Honorable L. Douglas Wilder
10. Allison Weinstein and the Weinstein Family (not the Appalachian string band, the University of Richmond loving cash raising property managers)

Who? Yeah, that's what we said.

Anyway, Trani and Wilder are heading for the cellar! Well, they don't have a stranglehold on the Top Five anymore. That's got to count for something.

There's your breaking news for the day. If we have time, we'll dig into the horserace later.

[Catrow and Murden. Heh. Shows you what a little passion gets you in this town -- blacklisted as being influential by Style. They'll never live this down.]

Richmond's Next Mayor: On the Issue of Infrastructure

Our schools are falling down around the children we are trying to teach. Potholes and unevenly patched stretches increasingly define our streets and avenues. You can see the river through the roadbed of at least one of our bridges. The city's drinking water and wastewater infrastructure is in need of a serious overhaul. Our acclaimed urban forestry program, which maintains more than 150,000 city-owned trees, is struggling to keep up. Overhead power lines are a primary feature of our landscape. The green infrastructure in the City of Richmond is non-existent.

The issue of a decaying urban infrastructure is not unique to Richmond, but Richmond cannot afford to wait for a national solution. It is an issue that impacts all Richmonders, and an issue the next mayor should address.

Richmond's infrastructure is in decline. The candidates for Mayor should tell us what they intend to do about the problem. Comment away...

Richmond's Next Mayor: I'm In the Money

If my vote was going to be solely based on who had raised how much money from which individuals and organizations, I'd be so about architect Lawrence Williams who reports exactly zero dollars raised in his campaign to become Richmond's next elected mayor.

The Times-Dispatch takes a look at the latest round of financial reporting from the five candidates for mayor, and it's no surprise that the three establishment candidates are raking in the cash while their opponents -- the optimistic contrarian Paul Goldman and the earnest Williams -- will struggle to buy lunch for their kitchen cabinets.

Dwight Clinton Jones, William J. Pantele and Robert J. Grey Jr. each have raised close to or more than $100,000 for their bids for mayor, according to campaign-finance reports released yesterday.

Meanwhile, Paul Goldman has brought in $3,500 in donations, followed by Lawrence E. Williams Sr., who reported no money raised.

Jones, a Richmond delegate and pastor, raised $130,656 through June 30 ... Pantele, president of the Richmond City Council, raised $129,477 and spent $19,937, leaving a balance of $109,540 ... Grey, an attorney, raised $96,100 and spent $4,500, leaving $91,600 available.

The breakdown of top donors is particularly interesting (except for Williams' top donor breakdown: "None"). Grey's top donors not only read like a Who's Who of Richmond's corporations, most of them can apparently throw down $5,000 without breaking a sweat -- executives at LandAmerica, Genworth, Dominion and other corporations all donated the maximum contribution to Grey's campaign. Jones and Pantele's top contributors all fall in the $1,000 to $2,000 range, and Pantele's campaign manager paints the breakdown as in "people versus corporate" light -- Pantele had 447 contributors to his campaign since April, while Jones had 256 and Grey reported 54.

Richmond's Next Mayor: Jones Eats RVABlogs

In an effort to prove that the Internet is an effective campaign medium, Delegate Dwight Jones has consumed RVABlogs; at 9:20 on Wednesday night, Jones' campaign weblog had reposted a total of 24 old posts, dominating the main RVABlogs page. Fight back, Internet! Fight back!

Richmond's Next Mayor: Wilder, from the Peanut Gallery

As Terry Rea notes today at SLANTblog, Richmond Mayor Doug Wilder's media team is running full bore these days -- and helping their non-candidate boss attempt to play spoiler and kingmaker simultaneously from the safety of his City Hall office.

Richmond's mayor, L. Douglas Wilder, was itching to make some news yesterday, but he didn't want to trust reporters to ask him the right questions. No problem. The Mayor just asked his own doggone self what he wanted to say and said it before a camera operator he could have fired, if it suited him.

The result was a short, rambling video that did little but perpetuate the squabbles he has been having for as long as anyone in these parts can remember.

Wilder repeated his leading from a distance play later this afternoon with a letter to City Council about an investigative report on last year's botched eviction of the Richmond School Board from City Hall.

These one-degree-of-separation, issued-from-a-distance commenting sessions have somehow turned into news, along with a slew of "unavailable for comment" tags:

• "Council President William J. Pantele couldn't be reached today"
• "Pantele and Jones could not be reached and their campaigns had no immediate comment."
• "Candidate Robert J. Grey Jr., who is closely associated with Wilder, did not return a message."
• "Wilder was not available for questions yesterday."

One thing Wilder apparently learned from his strategic once-mastermind Paul Goldman is how to make news without having to be accountable to it.

Richmond's Next Mayor: He's Not Heavy, He's Just Wilder

It's really hard to tell whether current Richmond Mayor Doug Wilder's latest screed -- a video assault against two candidates for his job, Dwight Jones and Bill Pantele -- scores points against the contenders for his job or adds to their electability. One thing's for sure, Wilder is determined to be relevant during the upcoming electoral season.

In the video, Wilder says one of the candidates for mayor "repeatedly opposed the switch to this new form of government. Another candidate for mayor is saying that the City Council's failure to meet a statutory charter deadline is contrived and the council is still in charge and the city employees should do as they did before."

Jones has said he voted to change the city's form of government to a popularly elected mayor, despite concerns about the "completeness of the legislation." Pantele was quoted yesterday on Richmond.com as saying that the budget dispute involved "needless conflict on an issue that's being contrived." Both candidates have been critical of Wilder's actions on the budget.

"We've got to decide . . . as to whether we want to move forward as we've done since 2005 or to allow the nine mini-mayors to run the city," Wilder said in the video, referring to City Council. "We've spent the last few years just trying to fix what has been done for decades."

Richmond's Next Mayor: Free Advice

Suzanne Morse at Smart Communities has some free advice for the nation's mayors during challenging economic times. It's advice that the candidates for Richmond's mayoral job might want to think about incorporating into their campaign platforms -- inviting citizens to get engaged in the care and feeding of their community is long overdue.

This is a time like no other to get citizens involved in the reality of local politics. I am not talking about a focus group to set priorities for local spending. I am talking about ways to inform and involve the public on the issues at hand. If there will be less for social services--say so--and ask for help. If parks and recreation are to be affected--say so--and ask for help. People are not stupid. They know that gas prices are affecting everything from food delivery to municipal services. This is an opportunity to change business as usual. More people have to step up to meet the needs. Methods of delivery have to change. This is time to remake the community where we live.

RICHMOND'S NEXT MAYOR: Pissing Off the Vibrant Confederate Coalition

I couldn't help but be amused by the brief story in today's Times-Dispatch -- "City's mayoral hopefuls cautious on Davis statue."

The question: Should a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis join the one of Abraham Lincoln at Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond?

The only honest answer: Are you f-ing kidding me?

Maybe we could get the kids who drop out of Richmond Public Schools to build it. Or put the city's Department of Public Works on statue detail and let the roads continue to collapse into themselves. Maybe there is an actual issue for the candidates to discuss...

Based on their answers, it appears that some of the candidates are afraid to annoy the all-powerful pro-Davis lobby that dominates city politics.

Richmond's Next Mayor: Give Me More of Goldman's Kind of Crazy

One of the things I like about a candidate like Paul Goldman is that by delivering bold ideas he changes the nature of the debate. Sometimes his ideas seem loopy. Sometimes they are loopy. But they certainly tell voters that there is a different way to lead a city.

Last week, for instance, Goldman stole the headlines and the local political conversation with an idea that was roundly criticized by the Internets and his opponents, and viewed with some degree of caution by what passes for the mainstream media in Richmond -- permanently closing Carytown to vehicular traffic, and creating a pedestrian mall in the heart of Richmond. From the Times-Dispatch:

Under Goldman's proposal, West Cary Street would be closed to cars, bicycles and anything else with wheels from Thompson Street to the Boulevard.

Cary then would be turned into a "street fair," with trees and gardens, that would be unrivaled in Virginia and on the East Coast, he said.

"It is time to unleash the potential of Carytown, and to do that, we need to throw out the old rules and open that stretch of Cary Street to the imagination, the ingenuity and the innovation that we need to take Richmond to the next level," Goldman said yesterday in an e-mail announcing his proposal.

Crazy? Not according to readers of West of the Boulevard News, who discussed the very idea in April as a response to a post by Richmond Magazine's Harry Kollatz titled, "What's Killing the Great Shops of Carytown?"

Quite simply, Carytown as a whole (or at some structured point), should be a pedestrian only area. In doing so, the roadway could be replaced with pavers, cobblestone, or some other unique layer. Park benches, fountains, larger sidewalks, trees, nice lamp posts, plants, and other features would need to be added. Store fronts would all need to be renovated to comply with some kind of higher standards of design. This would probably take some kind of a covenants committee who could oversee all improvements in the Carytown district. Think of Colonial Williamsburg’s Merchant Square, or in Boston….Fanuel Hall. These areas attract people not only for their shops and restaurants, but also because of their charm and enjoyable surroundings. Parking, Auto Traffic, People, and Money, are the hurdles that would need to be overcome. This would require all Carytown property owners to actively want to be part of some kind of association that had some control over their property. It would require extreme help from the city in the form of planning, implementation, money, and incentive to property owners and businesses. However, if Carytown was able to make this facelift and change it’s dynamic, it is hard to believe it wouldn’t be a huge success.

And way back in August of 2007, I posted the following comment in response to another WotBN post ("Carytown Online Charrette: How Would You Make Carytown Even Awesomer?"):

A few months ago for some reason I began to imagine an effort to turn the vast wasteland between Floyd and Ellwood and Nansemond and Thompson (where the Floyd Avenue post office and Verizon or whoever owns that vast brick building lie) into a combo parking, retail commercial space; and close Cary Street to traffic — all of the time.

Cary Street becomes a pedestrian mall.

More green space.

Open zoning for construction of new retail and second-floor residential on the side streets between Cary and Ellwood.

Maybe we're all crazy. Or maybe part of transforming Richmond involves stretching the imagination, viewing creativity as being part-and-parcel of good politics, demanding our leaders start with vision and work from there.

As the process of building Richmond's new Downtown Plan has demonstrated, the public responds to bold ideas -- and so does the status quo. And while not every bold idea is worth chasing, Richmond's history of hanging out with Mr. Same Ol' Same Ol' is an invitation to stagnation.

I'm not ready to go political skydiving with Goldman, but I hope he keeps throwing zingers into the conversation. Some of them will land. Others will simply show how pedestrian the rest of the candidates are.