New city budget process gets underway with town halls and release of department requests

In a crowded room Tuesday night in Richmond’s East End, a trio of top city officials made their pitches for why they should get a bigger share of taxpayer dollars.

Department of Public Works Director Bobby Vincent jokingly questioned whether extra dollars spent on schools or social services make the same kind of concrete difference as investing in his department.

“If you give the Department of Public Works a dollar, it will go into asphalt, trees and sidewalks,” Vincent said. 

After Vincent, Police Chief Rick Edwards reminded the crowd that in 1994, when he was playing basketball at the University of Richmond, the city saw 160 murders in a year. Safety, the chief said, is essential for a “functioning city.”

“Nobody cares if there’s more speed bumps,” Edwards said, to laughter in the room. “If you don’t have a safe city, if you can’t build a business because you’re afraid you’re going to get robbed, if you can’t walk to the park with your kids because you’re afraid someone is going to shoot you, then you can’t have the city we all want to have.”

Fire Chief Jeffrey Segal said he too is only asking for the basics his department needs, like new fire trucks and breathing equipment for firefighters.

“These are just good planning,” Segal said.

The goal of the exercise, according to city officials who conducted Tuesday’s meeting at the Luck’s Field Community Center, was to show the hard decisions that go into balancing Richmond’s yearly budget.

As Mayor Danny Avula’s administration heads into a budget-writing season with less new money to spend than City Hall usually has, it's trying out new ways to get the public more involved in the process.

Tuesday’s meeting was the first budget-focused town hall in a planned series of six events. Over the course of about two hours, officials explained Budgeting 101 to the residents who attended.

The event was more of a workshop than a traditional town hall. Residents were not given an open venue to sound off any topic related to the expenditure of city funds. Instead, they were walked through a series of exercises on broad budgeting principles and priorities and given a chance to interact with city department heads. Instead of an adversarial or questioning vibe, everyone got together for a group photo as the event wrapped up.

“That was really fun to watch,” Avula said. “I hope you all learned something about our process, about some of the tension we feel as we’re wrestling through priorities.”

The early-year budget events were part of a broader reboot of Richmond’s process meant to allow more public engagement before the mayor finalizes his budget proposal in a few months and presents it to the City Council.

Chief Administrative Officer Odie Donald II called the event he led a “test run” and “purposeful chaos.”

In a brief presentation, Donald acknowledged the city’s budget has grown substantially in recent years as property taxes have risen along with spiking home values in the city. But he said that doesn’t mean the city has a whole lot of excess dollars to spare, especially not in the year when the city is temporarily freezing property values in place and can’t count on getting a revenue boost from higher tax bills.

“Our expenses are actually growing much quicker than our revenues,” said Donald, adding that city employees are “the most expensive thing we pay for.”

When attendees were asked how they would allocate city funding based on what they felt was most important, public safety and education routinely ranked among the group’s top priorities.

“If the citizens don’t feel safe, it stops right there. They won’t come out of their houses. They won’t engage with the community. People will be afraid,” Jerry Blow, of South Richmond, said in an interview after the meeting.

Building a government budget, he added, is “not as easy as I thought.”

“We do it for our home, but when you're doing it for a city and you have opposing priorities from the citizens, it can make it very difficult,” Blow said. The mayor and the CAO, they’ve got a hard job. City Council too.”

Though Tuesday’s event was mostly an abstract exercise in prioritization and not a data-heavy look at the budget, the public and the City Council have more insight this year into budgetary matters that previously have been worked out behind the scenes.

An ordinance the Council approved last year requires the mayor’s administration to publish departmental budget requests, which contain preliminary numbers and don’t necessarily represent what could actually be included in Avula’s budget proposal. 

Because each department is asking for a share of a finite supply of dollars, Avula’s team is still working to decide what the city’s highest spending priorities should be. The mayor is expected to present his budget on March 11.

Here are some highlights from the departmental requests, which had to be posted online by Jan. 15:

• The Department of Housing and Community Development is seeking a $634.5% total funding increase by asking for $15 million to “accelerate affordable housing” in the city and $300,000 for an additional attorney to work on housing issues. The department’s current budget is roughly $2.4 million.
• The understaffed Richmond Police Department is asking for an additional $5.3 million in funding for overtime pay.
• The Department of Planning and Development Review is asking for 10 additional staffers to work on permitting and zoning as part of a nearly $1.8 million requested funding increase. 
• For city parks, officials are requesting money for 25 new positions at a cost of around $2.6 million, citing the “expansion of mowing operations” as a main driver of higher costs.
• The Greater Richmond Transit Company is requesting $12.9 million in additional funding, including nearly $10 million extra for the city’s general service contribution and $1.5 million to support zero-fare buses.
• The Office of Minority Business Development is requesting a $118.8% increase, with its budget more than doubling from about $1.07 million to around $2.3 million. The office is asking for more staff to address racial disparities in economic opportunities and $1 million for a loan/grant program to help minority-owned businesses.
• The Richmond Public Library is seeking nearly $1 million in additional funding, which would help cover the costs of a planned bookmobile and expanded library hours.
• The Department of Fire and Emergency Services is requesting nearly $12.4 million in additional funding to cover 21 new positions, new breathing equipment, two new fire engines and a new ladder truck.
• The communications office is asking for five new staff positions at a cost of $560,000. The requested positions would focus on public-records requests, social media content, broadcast and video production and public relations work for city departments that fall under the operations portfolio.
• The Richmond Sheriff’s Office wants an additional $7.1 million in operating funds to cover increased contract costs, security enhancements to jail cameras and scanners, legal fees and retention and recruitment costs.
• The struggling Department of Finance and the Department of Public Utilities, which is still working to recover from last year’s water crisis, have not yet requested any additional operating funding.

The Avula administration is planning five more budget town halls later this month and into February. The city has not released full details on when and where those events will take place, and one is listed as a “Closed Youth Session.”

Contact Reporter Graham Moomaw at gmoomaw@richmonder.org