As someone who is new to Richmond, I can say I’m appalled at the level of incompetence and non-accountability that seems to have reigned here for so long. It’s great that Mayor Wilder & Co. are making some checks on flagrant waste with, say, the gas-for-city-employees-and-their-75-best-friends thing, but it seems to be a zero sum when taken in light of the fact that taxpayers are supporting lawsuits between the city government and the school board. How do you make progress on a “master plan” when the people who run things aren’t going in the same direction?

You’ve commented before about the desire on the part of some leaders to put large parking lots downtown, get buses off Broad Street, export the homeless to [someplace else], etc. What this says to me is that Richmond just isn’t prepared to do what needs to happen for it to be a more vibrant, successful city. These folks seem to want to turn Richmond into a more centralized version of Henrico Co., or the equivalent. Richmond needs to be an effective city, with density and a street-level culture of some kind or another.