Tag: Jon Baliles
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Mayoral Non-Endorsement & a Self-Serving ($50K) Kumbaya Study
by Jon Baliles Today is Election Day and a free issue for all RVA 5×5 subscribers! If you haven’t voted, be sure to get out and do so! Speaking of voting, today’s issue is about Mayor Stoney’s press conference last week in which he released a city-funded study to prove everything is fine at City…
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A ‘Joy Bomb’ Going Off In Your Heart
by John Baliles The READ Center provides classroom instruction, one-to-one tutoring, and community programs to adults who want to improve their reading, writing, basic math and digital skills. Jake Burns at CBS6 reported last week about the 40th Anniversary of one of our region’s most important non-profits — the READ Center, which has been helping improve adult…
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Demolishing History: Black Hospital Edition
by Jon Baliles Virginia Union conducted a staged community meeting two weeks ago to feign concern over the fate of the former Richmond Community Hospital (RCH) so they can instead quickly get shovels in the ground to build new housing developments that they find more important than preserving a critical piece of the city’s black…
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Short-Changing Richmond’s At-Risk Youth
by Jon Baliles Tyler Layne with WTVR News reported last week another disturbing story about how City Hall has been shortchanging the city’s at-risk youth and leaving a lot of state money on the table that could be helping them find brighter and better futures. According to Layne, about $1 million of available state money…
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The Cesspool Overfloweth….
by Jon Baliles Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the “cesspool of corruption and inefficiency” that is inundating City Hall, the shark comes back around and takes another chunk out of any remaining credibility. Samuel Parker with the Richmond Times-Dispatch has found more glaring incompetence at 900 E. Broad Street…
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The Cesspool Is Back
by Jon Baliles When former Governor Doug Wilder ran for Mayor in 2004, his theme was that City Hall had become a “cesspool of corruption and inefficiency.” His promise to clean it up and his tough, no-nonsense reputation led him to win 78+% of the vote in a 4-person race. People were begging for change…
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Bonding With (or Against) the People
by Jon Baliles There has been a lot of activity across the region recently about bond ratings and localities issuing bonds. It is a timely comparison of priorities of local leaders, a glimpse of a possible future and what happens if you have people in charge who worry more about getting the big, shiny project…
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The Buck Stops Where, Exactly?
by Jon Baliles The city’s voter registrar is in the news again this week, and not because there is a primary election next week or huge elections both nationally and locally in November. This week, Graham Moomaw reported in the Virginia Mercury that the city’s Human Resource Department conducted a review of the Registrar’s Office…
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Education and Remembrance on the Banks of the James
by Jon Baliles The Virginia War Memorial sits solemnly upon the edge of Oregon Hill overlooking the city and the James River and honors the 12,000+ Virginia names of those who have fallen in service of our country since 1956. But in recent decades, it has become a place of education as well as of…
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Lack of Credit, RVA Edition
by Jon Baliles City Hall has spent the last few months trying to fix the meals tax fiasco where they were charging restaurants thousands and tens of thousands of dollars in penalties and interest which accrued that the restaurants never knew about and about which the city never made any attempt to contact them, so…
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Frosted Fame in Chesterfield
by Jon Baliles The Chesterfield County weekly newsletter featured a great story last week about Bailey Sheetz, a 13-year old Chester resident who is now on a first-name basis with Jerry Seinfeld and Melissa McCarthy in Hollywood. Sheetz made his movie debut in Seinfeld’s new Netflix movie Unfrosted, the satirical comedy about the launch of…
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Parking Decks, Debt, & Trap Doors
by Jon Baliles On Wednesday afternoon at 3:00pm in City Council chambers, City Council will vote and approve the plan presented by the Mayor and Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) to allow Richmond to issue $170 million in bonds to pay for the new baseball stadium on ten acres that will be surrounded by about 57…
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RVA Car Tax Elevator: Going Up!
by Jon Baliles A reader alerted us this week that if you have not yet gotten your personal property tax bill (car tax) from the City of Richmond, you soon will — and it will be notably higher than last year unless you bought a newer model or drive a jalopy. The city receives roughly…
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Fairness + Accountability = Thriving City
by Jon Baliles The city of Richmond seems to be trying to plug all of the holes in its boat, also known as the U.S.S. Meals Tax Fiasco, that has been taking on water for months. It seems that the city is finally wiping out the erroneous meals tax payments and interest they had charged…
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Diamonds Aren’t Forever
by Jon Baliles The entire saga of the development of the Diamond District project in Richmond has come full circle in the last 18 months, as Mayor Levar Stoney, desperate for an economic development win after the failure of his Navy Hill boondoggle and two failed casino referendums, has rounded the bases trying to get…