The exit interview: Levar Stoney reflects on eight years as Richmond's mayor
Being a mayor is a little like crowd-surfing, Mayor Levar Stoney said Friday as he gave a farewell speech at City Hall to a full room of city employees, political allies and family members.
It can feel like jumping off a stage, Stoney said as he borrowed the analogy from former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, without knowing whether the crowd is in sync and ready to catch you.
“Over the past eight years, I have certainly jumped, landing in your arms many times,” Stoney said. “And occasionally, we didn’t quite connect. But that’s the nature of the job I took an oath to do.”
On Friday, Stoney fought back tears several times as he gave a final speech recapping his two terms in office and listened as others applauded his time leading the city. In his speech, he thanked city employees for their dedication, urged Richmonders to take pride in their city and not “tear ourselves down” and marveled at the fact he was standing there at all.
“After eight years of service, there are still days I can’t believe it. The little boy born to two unwed teenagers, raised by his grandmother, who grew up with holes in his socks and couldn’t afford the fees to bring his textbooks home or go on field trips, became the mayor of Virginia’s capital city,” he said. “It just goes to show that placing limits on a child’s dreams is both foolish and misguided. I have never, not for one moment, taken this hard-earned opportunity for granted.”
A former executive director of the Democratic Party of Virginia and political aide to former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Stoney was elected mayor of Richmond in 2016 and won a second four-year term in 2020. Now seeking the party’s nomination for lieutenant governor, Stoney will leave office at the end of the year. He’ll be succeeded by Mayor-Elect Danny Avula, a longtime public health official who was in attendance for Stoney’s speech along with several of his transition advisers.
“Mayor-Elect, you’ve got a tough act to follow, ” McAuliffe said as he congratulated Avula.
Stoney is leaving office with a mixed record of wins and losses. Many Richmonders still have mixed views about the quality of City Hall operations, prompting Avula and the four mayoral contenders he beat to all run on promises to shape up the city government and build more trust with residents.
But in a series of farewell events over the last few weeks, Stoney and his team have emphasized what they contend is mostly a record of progress, one that the departing mayor said has left him “at peace.”
We sat down with Stoney for an exit interview last week, as the countdown clock being kept on a whiteboard in the mayor’s office showed he had 14 days left.
This transcript of that interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
The interview
Jump to: Challenges of being mayor | The strong mayor system | Lincoln Saunders | Successes | The monuments | Richmond Public Schools | Poverty in Richmond | Regrets | Advice for Danny Avula
Q: I still have a video clip on my phone from when you first announced you were running for mayor. It's a younger version of you saying city government is kind of stuck in its ways. We need some new energy, some new blood. I'm going to bring dynamism to City Hall. Shake things up. Do you feel like you've achieved what you set out to achieve?
Absolutely. Today, I was commenting to my team about how when I first arrived here, I thought there was a lack of professionalism. We are certainly more of a professional operation, professional enterprise, compared to where we were eight years ago. Hell, a decade ago.
I saw how things were done at the state level, working out of the Executive Branch, working out of the governor's office. And I thought why don't we do that over here? Or why do we do what we do over here? And sometimes I was not given really great answers. And I made some changes in terms of personnel, which is obviously very difficult. But I surrounded myself with the right people, with good people who brought credibility back to the work of City Hall.
And then started investing in the rank and file terms of human capital, raising their salaries and their pay. We were able to raise morale. Who knew when you actually invest in and respect those who work over here, what you can get out of them. That their work product would get better. We've seen that improvement over time, and I'm proud of that.
Obviously, I would never paint a picture that everything's all perfect. But when you think about the core services of the city, they are a lot stronger than they were when I first arrived. And I'm proud of that.
More roads paved, $112 million invested in roads. We’re going to pave over a thousand lane miles of roads here in the city. More sidewalks repaired. More bike lanes around the city. That’s for some a good thing, for some a bad thing. But we wanted to connect all these different bits of bike lanes around the city. And we did that.
We pick the trash up on time. We do that well, but we wanted to reform the way we handled bulk and brush so mattresses aren't hanging around for weeks on end. Not a sexy thing to tackle, but we did it.
Leaf collection is not a bother like it used to be. I remember when I first was running, I heard about leaf collection regularly on the doors. And now I don't hear anything about it.
Those are the sort of core services we sometimes overlook that I think a lot of our residents care about.
I always give this analogy that you’ve got Miss Jackson who’s living in Church Hill, and what she cares about most happens right in front of her door. She'll walk out to the curb line. She'll look to the left, she'll look to the right. She looks to the left and there’s a drug dealer hanging out at the corner? She's going to let us know. That's a problem. She looks to the right, if she sees a mattress by her neighbor's home hanging out for the last three weeks, she's going to let us know. She looks down in the street and she sees potholes littering her street, she's going to let us know.
So we've worked on those core things right there, and I think that's why you've seen the standard of living and the quality of life change for the better here in the city.
Challenges of the job
Q: You recently said this is one of the hardest jobs in Virginia politics. I don’t know if you were talking about being a mayor anywhere or being the mayor of Richmond in particular. Can you elaborate on that? What makes this such a difficult job?
Number one, it's an office that has executive power that's closest to the people.There's no other mayor in this state that has the sort of executive power that the office of the mayor of the city of Richmond does.
Kenny Alexander is a friend of mine in Norfolk. Phillip Jones, a friend of mine in Newport News. Sherman Lea's a friend of mine in Roanoke. But they don't have the same sort of executive power that this office does. And there's an expectation that comes with that.
When you are not the chief executive and you have a city manager, everybody expects the city manager is the person who's going to solve your problem and fix your issue. Here, people know that I’m the strong mayor and they expect me to fix their problems.
And they normally can find me pretty easily. I could be out having dinner. I could be out socializing with friends. And folks know they can find me. They can get to me. Unlike the job of a legislator or the governor where there are many layers before it gets to you.
I think 2020 was a great example of how this job is so difficult because you have an administrative role in terms of getting services to people who are isolating and whatnot. So I have to still run this organization despite a 100-year pandemic going on. There's no playbook, no manual, for how to run a city in the middle of a pandemic where everybody's isolated.That’s hard. That’s hard as hell.
Then you have the social unrest. Part of this leadership role that I have, it's about order as well. And you have to be the one to bring order back to the city. You’re going to piss some people off by doing that. But we had to, and we did it.
I’ll have to admit, I asked for a challenging role. Other people were trying to get me to run for other offices back in 2016. I think you may remember the talk. And I said ‘You know what, if I'm going to run for office, I want a job that is going to be challenging.’ Well, I got what I asked for.
This job is challenging. But I've always signed up for the most challenging roles or jobs in life, because you don't grow as a person without a little challenge. I had a lot of challenge early on in my life. It's made me the man I am today. And I'm happy that I made the decision to run for mayor. Because I wanted something that was challenging, something that was going to make me a better person but also a better leader. And as I exit this office, I know that I'm both of those.
The strong mayor system
Q: Do you think this strong mayor system is serving Richmond residents well? Do you see anything that could be changed in terms of mayor versus chief administrative officer versus council versus schools? Could it be improved in any way?
I think the system is working well.
I would want to see this role enhanced. If it's going to be a strong mayor form of government, make the mayor truly a strong mayor.
We’ve got a chief administrative officer who is the city manager but reports directly to the mayor, And that's the only hire of the mayor. I’ve always believed the mayor needs more power and authority to run City Hall, to run this organization.
In the past, there have been conflicts between the chief administrative officer and the mayor, sometimes not being on the same page. In my last term, I was able to avoid that. Because I got the person that I wanted to be the chief administrative officer. And I think that matters, because you don't want someone in that role who's building essentially a fiefdom behind your back. You want that person to be aligned with you on just about every single decision.
I never had to worry about whether or not Lincoln Saunders was aligned with my agenda. When you don't have to worry about that, you can just empower the people to run the operation. I've got enough external politics to worry about with me versus the City Council.
That's the one thing that I thought made the second term a lot easier. Because now I know where things are, and also I don't have to worry about the internal bureaucratic politics anymore, because Lincoln has that.
I am a believer in enhancing the powers of the mayor, but giving City Council, the legislative branch, more oversight as well. There are certain cities I've evaluated in the past, — Pittsburgh, Atlanta — where the mayor has more of a role in choosing who the chief is and then having the City Council consent to that as well. There's ways that we can balance this.
The chief administrative officer is the only role that the mayor currently appoints and the City Council gives their consent. We can also do that for other roles as well. It doesn't have to be isolated just with the CAO. Because by doing that, you give the council some skin in the game. This is also your chief as well.
Lincoln Saunders
Q: There’s been an argument coming from inside the building that we don't want too much staff turnover and it might be good for the organization to keep some of the current leadership in place. We know the current CAO is not going to be staying on after January 1. Do you have any thoughts on Lincoln's decision to leave and what it's going to mean for the city to bring in a new administrator?
It is certainly a blow to city government with Lincoln Saunders not staying on beyond December 31. Because, in my eyes, this is the best chief administrative officer the city has had in this form of government.
When you think about the AAA credit rating, you think about our transition to the Virginia Retirement System, the fact that the Richmond Retirement System is 80% funded at the moment. That's a big win. The minimum wage is $20 an hour. Collective bargaining agreements have been agreed to. We've made some real advances in city government, and Lincoln Saunders is the person to credit for that.
You get a lot of institutional knowledge walking out the door with him. So Dr. Avula not having that on day one will obviously be a blow to the city. But Sabrina Joy-Hogg is a fine public servant. And she knows this enterprise pretty well. I think she will certainly get him through that interim period before he selects a chief administrative officer.
Successes in office
Q: What do you see as your biggest successes, the things you got right that you are most proud of?
One thing I'm very proud of — and maybe at first I didn't think it was actually something we could have an impact on — was what we've done with the poverty rate in the city. We've been able to cut poverty by third, by 33% over the course of the last eight years.
We did that with innovative programs like guaranteed income, our Richmond Resilience Initiative. We brought in over 6,500 good-paying jobs to Richmond. We’ve got CoStar coming out of the ground, an amphitheater, the Diamond District was approved. These projects bring good jobs to the city, whether in construction or in the long term operations of those businesses.
I'm also proud of the fact that I lived up to my commitment on funding Richmond Public Schools. We've seen nearly a 60% increase in funding of their operation. We also said we're going to do a little bit more for our children once they leave the classroom. And so every elementary-schooler, every middle-schooler has an after school program that's available to them. I'm proud that now, if you graduate from Richmond Public Schools, the city of Richmond will remove the financial hardship of attending a post-secondary opportunity. Whether you get a credential or an associate degree, the Pathways scholarship program will pay for kids to go to community college right here.
I'm proud that we're a AAA credit rating city. People told me that we could not be AAA, like it's not going to happen, give up on it. Making sure that we have enough dollars in our stabilization fund, the rainy day fund, the assigned fund balances, that's a difficult thing to do in a place that has a lot of needs. People said spend the money. And I said no, sometimes we need to eat our vegetables. And not do what my family did when I was a kid and spend down to zero every time. Instead, we started saving money, started investing money into our retirement system and our insurance liabilities, things of that nature. And we became a AAA credit rated city. To me, that's amazing. Particularly for a locality that at one time had a poverty rate above 26%.
Can I throw the Diamond District in there as well? For 20 years running, we had no answer to how we were going to keep our baseball team in the city. I got unanimous approval from the City Council on that. And there's steel coming out of the ground right now over at the new ballpark. That’s awesome.
Another thing that I get recognized for a lot — and I know the historians will obviously tag me with for a very long time, and it's something I did not seek — was removal of those Confederate monuments. Symbols matter, and the removal of those monuments meant that we finally closed the chapter on being the capital of Confederacy. Obviously removing monuments didn’t change race relations. No one ever said it would. But symbols matter.
People said, ‘Oh, you take down the monuments, people are going to flee the city, the city would fall into the earth, the sun won’t come back up again, the best days have passed.’ And guess what? More people have moved to Richmond. Because we are not your granddaddy's Richmond anymore.
The monuments
Q: You said you didn't seek that out. Do you think that would have happened were it not for all the protesters taking to the streets at that point in time and demanding that those monuments come down?
I think it would have still happened if we were given the ability to remove the monuments. And thankfully, the Democratic trifecta delivered on empowering localities to actually make these decisions. I don't know whether it would have happened in 2020, but I think we had a commitment from those on City Council that this was something we were going to do.
There are people who are still walking around our city today who say ‘I would have never, ever thought that in my lifetime those monuments would be gone.’ Because, remember, they stood for a century, and we removed them. And now Richmond’s off on another path towards the future.
Richmond Public Schools
Q: I want to go back to the stat you mentioned about increasing funding for schools by almost 60%. I saw that in one of your releases and that was a surprise to me.
You covered the previous administration and people marching down … what was it, Support Our Schools? And all the rallies that were on the front steps. We haven't had any of that. Why? Because I lived up to my commitment. I made a promise, and I kept my promise.
Sometimes your promises aren't good enough for a lot of people. But you think about what's occurred in Richmond Public Schools today, the average salary being, what, $72,000 a year? That is impressive. We have picked up the cost of funding our school division. But the commonwealth, you've seen their support slow over the last decade. We need them to step it up.
Q: Do you feel that extra city funding has translated to real-world improvement in the schools?
Yes, I do believe that we have seen some progress in terms of academic achievement. Is it exactly what I envisioned when I began in terms of how much we were able to turn the needle? No. Why not? Because of the pandemic. And when these kids were out of school for more than a year, doing school virtually, you saw these sort of declines all across the commonwealth.
If the pandemic hadn't happened and the level of funding we were pushing into Richmond Public Schools was maintained, you would have seen even greater progress than we've seen.
But at the end of the day, their stats have outpaced the average in the commonwealth of Virginia in terms of accredited schools and gains in reading and math. And what Jason Kamras has stated is that if you didn't fund the schools the way we requested it, we would have had serious issues during the pandemic.
What our funding does allow for Richmond Public Schools to do is actually plan for once. They knew when they were working with me that they were going to be my number one priority. And I've lived up to that commitment.
Poverty in Richmond
Q: You talked about the poverty rate. How much of that reduction in poverty reflects that the standard of living is actually getting better for low-income people versus the city's changing demographics, where new people are coming in who may have higher incomes than people already here and lower-income people may be getting priced out of the city?
I think the poverty rate where it is today is due to a number of factors. Part of it’s migration, but part of it is that people are just doing better in the city. People have access to better job opportunities in the city.
If you look at my record when it comes to economic development, that was the sole reason why I pursued the economic development projects that I did to ensure that we can really, truly have a working class, a middle class here in the city. And that is still our biggest problem. There is a real income inequality gap here. You’ve got folks with a lot of disposable income, and you’ve got folks who are living truly paycheck to paycheck.
It's good that we are able to bring in jobs. CoStar will be averaging roughly $80,000 a year. But we have to make sure that there are good-paying jobs for the working class in the city. So every economic development endeavor that I pursued, I ensured that the working class was going to get their fair share. Sometimes it worked. And sometimes it didn't work. But the reason why you see a reduction in the poverty rate is because we've been able to braid economic growth with economic opportunity.
If we're going to grow, then we're also going to invest in the social safety net.
You got fare-free transit, so the hardest-working people in the city don't have to use that percentage of their annual income on transportation to get from their home to their job. That matters.
You've seen an investment in affordable housing as well. We got 7,000 affordable housing units, either created or preserved during our tenure, $50 million in the trust fund invested and then our performance grant program as well.
There's a number of things that we've done over the course of the last eight years that have really been targeted towards the working class in the city.
The social safety net sort of collapsed during the pandemic. And I think that's why you saw a spike in violent crime in not just our city but across the United States. We were very intentional in terms of netting that safety net back together.
Regrets
Q: Do you have any regrets from your time in office? Anything you feel was a failure or things you would have done differently if given a do-over?
I've been regularly telling folks, I work too damn hard to have any regrets, right?
I had a good model and a father who I saw did not love going to work every day as a janitor. I saw him get out of bed and I was like, he looks very unhappy about going to work. I've lived a great life in which I get to go to work with a smile on my face most days. So it's hard for me to have any regrets.
With the wisdom of hindsight, there are some things I would have done differently. I think about Navy Hill. I would’ve done that differently. If I used the same model and also had the same City Council as what we used for the Diamond District, I think we would have definitely won approval of Navy Hill. Our communication was better, our transparency was better.
If I could get a do-over, it would be Navy Hill. Because of the economic injection it would have brought to downtown.
Q: There is some mistrust towards City Hall. You said there's been improvement in core services but everybody kind of has a horror story about their utility bill, their tax bill or something like that. There is distrust towards City Hall when it comes to big projects, because people feel like the little things aren't being done well.
I think there's a distrust in government just overall, whether it's the federal government, state government or local government. Donald Trump was able to capitalize on that in this election. He capitalized on people's distrust of government. And we are not immune to that same distrust.
As I stated earlier, the core services in which our taxpayers invest in with their dollars have improved. We can show you that. What we need to improve on and we have not been the strongest in is customer service.
In 2024, people have busy lifestyles but also expect a more convenient interaction with institutions like City Hall. And when they are inconvenienced by an incorrect utility bill or incorrect tax form, that is bothersome. That gets on people's nerves. And I fully understand. I get it. But that's not to say that the core services the city delivers haven't improved.
Comcast or Dominion may deliver, whether it's cable or the internet or or electricity, they may do that well. But when I get on the phone with them and need to talk to them about my bill, are they getting that part right? That's the stuff that gets under your skin, and that's what some of our residents have experienced.
We can fix that through investing in personnel, through investing in technology. That right there would make life a lot more convenient for our residents. They want to be able to pay their bill and know that the bill that they're paying is absolutely what they owe, nothing more or nothing less.
Advice for Danny Avula
Q: What’s the most important piece of advice you could give to Danny Avula?
Be bold. Be audacious.
We are only in this office for a finite period of time. And in order to get to this office, you have to work pretty damn hard. You have to go ask random people for money. You have to knock on people's doors and beg them for their votes. This job can humble you. But since you work so hard, you might as well go ahead and be bold.
There are people who benefit from just simply the status quo. I refused to allow the status quo to dictate my eight years.
And that means I stepped on some people's toes. I may have pissed some people off, but at the end of the day, I knew that it was important to push the envelope for those who normally don't have a voice in city government, those who have been neglected by their city government, those who love the city but at times felt like the city didn't love them back.
Don’t come in here and be a status quo follower. Push the envelope.
