Police Response Times

Are We Safe In Our Homes?
The number of sworn Richmond officers has dropped by more than 150 in recent years, and police response times have increased from just 4 minutes to 8 minutes. This means that if you are a victim of a home invasion, there's an fair chance that the bad guys will come and go, long before police arrive. Intuitively we know this means that home alarm systems now won't fully protect us. Were you aware of the long response times? Does this mean we are somewhat unprotected in our homes? Should emergency measures be taken? How does this compare to the counties? Are we wisely spending the $100 million plus Police budget each year?

Credit Card Fraud

Lincoln Saunders, our former CAO, unwisely issued city credit cards to employees with insufficient controls. It was a disaster with much fraud and abuse. Saunders feebly claimed that only a few percent were used fraudulently, but it's perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars. We know that someone in the Richmond Fire Department has been paid for phoney invoices totaling up to $8 million. We demand to know what has been or is being done about this massive fraud and theft of taxpayer money?

DPU In Chaos

The city DPU is riddled with incompetence. Tens of $ millions in past due accounts are documented as past due or uncollectible. $60 million in total past due has been reported by the Times Dispatch. They seem unable to read meters causing wild water and gas bills, some of which are $2,000, $5,000, and even $10,000, for a single residence. The average telephone hold time for DPU customer service is over one hour. Water meters are literally leaking and running wide open all over the city. Is anyone looking into this?

19 City Employee Holidays. Don't Come To Work! No One At City Hall

Shockingly, former Richmond CAO Saunders and Mayor Stoney increased the number of city employee paid days off to 19 including 2 for mental health. Often making city hall a proverbial ghost town, dark, and unavailable to assist citizens or do any work on an excessive number of days. That's nearly a month per year city hall is empty, but the phones still ring. Serving citizens is apparently no priority in RVA, though under Mayor Avula we expect this will change.

City 311, A Voice-Mail Inferno

Citizens often can not now reach the city staff by phone, and the problem has persisted for decades! The 311 phone system is a call into Voice-Mail Inferno because, leave a message and likely you will never get a return call. You can literally hold for an hour, and you will be cut off. This is failure of government's most basic function. Mayor Avula is aware of the problem so let's see if major changes can be made.

Breaking State Foia Law

Former Richmond CAO Saunders in particular demonstrated a penchant for secrecy and there's manifest proof in the FOIA debacle. Led by Saunders it has been a secret riddled government. The secrecy and lack of transparency must stop. Mayor Avula ran on a platform of transparency, so we expect this to dramatically improve.

Disappearing Phone Directory, Will Now Reappear on This Site

Making matters worse, former Mayor Stoney and CAO Saunders, eliminated the city employee phone directory. That's right, they seemingly wanted to make it impossible for a citizen to ever get help by phone or email. There is a consistent theme: If few citizens get through, the city has fewer problems to solve. This is a consummate failure to serve our most needy citizens, especially Black and Brown. Click the link on the home page to search for the name, or department of a city employee you need to reach.

1200 New City Workers, Extreme Low Performance, Low Respect For Leadership

The prior city administration hired about 1200 new city workers and the average taxpayer can't name one new service they received. The morale of Richmond city employees has been measured as among the lowest in the USA. The culture is one of criticism, punishment and secrecy. Low morale especially occurs when there is low respect for leadership due to a lack of credentials. There's no doubt that Mayor
Avula and his new CAO intend to raise both employee morale and performance.